Edwin Turner Osbaldeston was a world class con man and criminal,
but reading his biography did not solve my mystery!

A few weeks ago I told the weird story of what I thought was a valuable Civil War relic that turned out to be a total fraud. The story of Edwin Turner Osbaldeston (1838-1929) as recounted in his biography, “An Uncommon Criminal,” was fascinating but brought me no closer to an answer about how the supposed Memento of the Battle of Five Forks came to be created or how it got into my family home in Geneseo, New York.

Thanks to ETO’s great grandchild Ken Silver, one of the co-authors of the book, I received a copy in the mail last week. As someone who knows a little bit about book publishing and history, I can say that the book was extremely well documented with extensive footnotes of every fact. Ken’s background as a history teacher certainly shows!

The 150-page book is also handsomely laid out in a coffee table format with ample pictures and copies of original news articles and other primary documents. Obviously a great deal of work went into uncovering the story of his not-so-illustrious ancestor. Which raises the question, why would anyone want to tell the story of such a disreputable family member?

It is said that if you go far enough back in any family tree you will probably find a horse thief, but most people don’t brag about that, much less write a book detailing all of his crimes. ETO was not only a horse thief, but he seemed to have a compulsion to steal almost anything that wasn’t nailed down. The ultimate Con Man, he also specialized in jailbreaks, jumping bail, arson, abusing his wives and children and eventually graduated to double murder.

Remarkably, he spent very little time in jail for his many crimes, not even for the murders he committed in Germany in 1902. He was judged insane by the local judges over there and quickly deported back to America, where he continued his criminal way of life. We may not like the dark side of the Internet, but at least nowadays it would be impossible for such a serial nogoodnik to get away with a 50-year crime spree without people piecing together the truth.

When I asked Ken why he had written a book about such a notorious family member, he simply said that, “the story was too good not to tell,” and that is certainly true! It all started back in England where his father apparently conceived him in a relationship with his half-sister. ETO’s mother was the daughter of his father’s wife from a prior marriage. If that seems confusing to you, consider how it may have affected the child. He wasn’t quite his own grandpa, but close!

Although later holding himself out as a member of the English aristocracy, he was anything but. The family lived in relative poverty and had to change residences often according to where his father could find work. Of course his father had a large family to support, with the two step-children from his wife’s first marriage, 4 children from his legitimate marriage, and ETO was one of 7 children from the illicit relationship his father had with his step-daughter. If they made a TV show about it, they would have to call it “13 is enough,” if they could get it by the censors!

Out of that hothouse of a family background I suppose anything is possible and ETO proved that. After a brief stint with the English Army in Malta, he deserted and found a wife back in England. The young couple moved to London where ETO found employment as an attendant in a Turkish bath, a trade he would pursue off and on for the rest of his life. It was there that he first started to style himself as “Doctor,” although of course he had little medical training.

On March 10, 1865 at the age of 27, he and his wife embarked on the 4-month passage to Australia, thus putting the lie to his later claim to have fought in the American Civil War or at the Battle of Five Forks which was fought on April 1, 1865.

Once landed in Australia, he began the lifelong process of blowing up his background and skills to anyone who would listen. Based on some illness among the ship’s passengers, he greatly exaggerated his role helping the sick and claimed to have been acting as the ship’s surgeon. He also presented himself to local Turkish Spas as having been a former manager of the London Spa and applied for similar positions.

In his first years in Australia he and his young family moved frequently and his positions at local Turkish baths never quite seemed to work out as he fought with owners and managers. Between jobs he would sometimes open his own small-scale Turkish bath in his own home. During this period he also learned hypnotism and began giving public performances of his skill.

From connections he made through his bath experience he somehow landed a job as valet and private masseuse to England’s Prince Albert during his royal visit to Australia in 1867. This was considered a very big deal in that country, as it was the first-ever royal trip to that colony.

In a pattern to be repeating numerous times in ETO’s life, just when it seems like his prospects were looking up, he managed to make a total mess of things. He took advantage of his position on the inside of the royal household to relieve the Prince of many of his possessions, including the linens from his bed, his dishware and even the Prince’s royal underwear!

At about the same time a number of burglaries had been occurring in the neighborhood where ETO lived and his wife was caught trying to pawn stolen property. Although ETO tried to run he was caught hiding in a hay loft. A subsequent search of his house uncovered a large quantity of stolen goods including some belonging to the Prince. That was enough to get him sent away for a 5-year term of hard labor breaking rocks.

After prison he attempted to re-establish his bath and massage business in Tasmania, adding the new specialty of “Hydrotherapy” for which he claimed all kinds of miracle cures. This brought the attention of the local authorities who charged him with practicing medicine without a license. He declined to show up for that hearing and thus ended that practice.

Returning to Australia there was the little matter of the disappearance of his wife. In later years, ETO told various stories of what happened to her and how he ended up with full custody of their daughter. Among the more fanciful was that she had disappeared while helping search the Outback for a missing German scientist, and was probably eaten by kangaroos!

That story was obviously made up as the scientist had disappeared 17 years before ETO arrived in Australia, and kangaroos prefer to avoid humans and in any case are herbivores. There is some evidence that the wife had taken up with another man during his 5 years in prison, and either abandoned their child, or more likely met an unfortunate end at ETO’s jealous hands.

In any case, ETO embarked on a career as a ship’s “surgeon” booking a gig on a ship to San Francisco where he stayed for 6 weeks in 1876. On the return trip he got off in New Zealand to try again for a fresh start. He embarked on a fairly successful lecture tour around the country, but that was cut short when he once again was charged with theft. This time he was charge with stealing a fairly expensive coat off a ferry boat.

He was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in jail. On his release he was charged with the theft of a second coat. While awaiting trial on that charge he escaped from the local jail and went on the run again. After he was eventually caught, he was sentenced to another 14 days for jail break, but by the time the coat charge was brought before the court he had fled the country.

After all his adventures Down Under in 1876 he returned with his daughter to England. Over the next four years, he resumed his pattern of giving lectures, working as a bath attendant and found a new wife. He claimed they were married in England in 1879, but he didn’t actually make it legal until they arrived in New York City in 1880. It might have been that he didn’t want to answer too many questions about what happened to his first wife, or to cover the fact that his new wife was already pregnant when they arrived in America.

After arriving in New York, ETO moved to Upstate Rome to restart his practice. Everything was going well until he went to nearby Utica to attend a political rally. Apparently having no easy way to get back home he stole a horse and wagon that a local farmer had left on the street. He drove the rig to Binghamton where he sold it and the horse for $35.

A few days later another horse and carriage was stolen from the same Binghamton shop. This one was driven back to Utica and sold for $125 by a man using a fake name who matched ETO’s description. When ETO finally got back to Rome he told a tall tale about how he had been hunting in the North Woods and had sold a bunch of furs for $35.

ETO was arrested on the Binghamton theft which was big news in the Upstate communities where he had established his practice. After newspaper accounts were published, many others came forward reporting that they suspected ETO of having stolen their property as well. The man couldn’t help himself!

After sojourning in the Broome County jail for a few weeks, ETO once again engineered a jail break and fled to Scranton, Pa. He was briefly captured there before escaping again by jumping out a bathroom window. This time he managed to avoid the long arm of the law and return back to England, where he even wrote a letter back to the Binghamton authorities apologizing for his untimely exit.

Perhaps that was meant to throw the authorities off his trail, because 6 months later he returned to NYC and set up his practice again. This time he even founded The New York School of Training for Massage, and by all appearances created a successful practice treating many well-known personages including former President Grant.

He travelled frequently around New York State and the open charge for horse theft seemed to have been forgotten until it suddenly re-emerged over 40 years later when ETO was in his 90s. By that time, he was a beloved old character living in a small shack in Asbury Park, NJ.

He regaled the reporters who showed up on his porch for this national news story with mostly fake stories of his adventurous life. The public rallied around him and the Governor said he would not allow extradition on the charges, so once again ETO escaped justice!

In 1894, ETO began spending summers near the northern NY Town of Malone. He purchased a lake property with the view of making it into a clinic. He invited one of his NY School students to visit, a young lady from Germany named Louise Weiss. This became his final ruination as he started an affair with her, got her pregnant and then eventually followed her back to Germany when she fled there with their child..

When ETO found her living with a man there he gunned the fellow down in a fit of jealousy. Another man was caught in the crossfire and was also killed. ETO claimed self-defense, but the authorities seemed more interested in getting him out of the country and avoiding a trial. By 2003 he was back in NYC to pursue his life of deception, exaggeration and crime as if nothing had happened.

This account, which is already 2,000 words long, is only a brief survey of the major events in ETO’s life. The full story is contained in the book which is available at Amazon. I highly recommend it. It’s an incredible story, even if it didn’t get me any closer to solving the mystery!

ETO was a man who loved to be the center of attention, and to accomplish that he often invented his past. Having a memento of the Civil War ostensibly presented by Gen. Phillip Sheridan was the perfect prop for that.

New York State prison guards went on a wildcat strike in February of 2025. Although the strike was “settled” 3 weeks later, the repercussions continue to roil the system.

Note: It recently came to my attention that there are currently over 2,500 National Guard members still working in NYS prisons, well over a year after a strike of prison guards was settled in March of 2025. I put on my reporters hat and dug unto the story. What I found was disturbing.

When Correctional Officers at 40 of the New York State’s 42 prisons went out on an illegal strike starting on Feb. 17, 2025, 1,400 National Guardsmen were initially called up to help run the prisons. That was just the start of a program that will probably end up costing state taxpayers close to $2 billion through the current fiscal year that ends on March 31, 2027, and may continue on beyond that.

Although the illegal strike was not supported by the Correctional Officers Union, a settlement was negotiated through the union, however, that settlement was not supported by many of the wildcatters who refused to return to work. As a result, NY Governor Kathy Hochul fired 2,000 of the guards. Many others have retired in the months after the strike.

The total number of Corrections Officers in the state before the strike was 14,200. By the end of 2025, that number had dropped to around 11,300, a decrease of almost 3,000 officers. There are an estimated 4,600 positions currently vacant. That required the National Guard personnel to pick up the slack.

A total of 8,000 National Guard troops racked up a total of 800,000 hours in the prison during 2025 according to an annual report. Pay for National Guard soldiers on duty normally varies by rank and experience, however, under a law pushed through by Gov. Pataki after 9/11, all Guard members assigned to active duty are paid at the Sergeant level, even if they are not Sergeants.

This means that all Guard soldiers make a minimum of $3,000 and a maximum of $6,700 per month in regular salary. Those working in the prison also receive a $4,000 monthly bonus in addition to their regular pay. That computes to between $84,000 and $128,000 per year, which is probably why you don’t hear the Guard soldiers complaining too much about the duty, which was made voluntary on April 1, 2025.

In addition, troops are entitled to a tax-free BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing) payment that depends on the prevailing rents in their home area. For example, a private from NYC gets a BAH of $4,833 per month, while one from a low-rent Upstate area such as Watertown only receives a BAH of $1,356.

But don’t worry, they don’t have to actually spend that money on rent. The state is also spending a small fortune on providing hotel rooms to house the troops, vehicle leasing to transport them to and from the prisons and meal allowances to feed them, although there are some reports of soldiers being forced to sleep on cots inside prisons.

During the height of the operation there were over 6,000 Guardsmen on duty and it was costing the state $100 million a month. As of February of 2026 it was estimated that the cost of the first year of the Guard deployment totaled over $1 billion, and it is currently still costing the state at least $50 million a month.

In addition, the state rewarded those Correction Officer who stayed in the system after the strike with something called a “Temporary Enhanced Overtime Rate.” The state has not disclosed how much these enhance overtime bonuses have been.

Adding to the total cost of this fiasco, the state has reportedly paid settlements to guards who were fired and filed union grievances that they did not receive the required due process hearings guarantee by their Union contract. Rather than fight the grievance, the state reportedly has simply paid an undisclosed sum to those guards.

The Department of Corrections annual budget for 2025 was around $4 billion. It is not clear where the money came from to pay for all these extra costs, but ultimately it must come from the taxpayers.

The 2026-27 budget for the fiscal year that started April 1, included an extra $500 million to “stabilize” the system. Presumably that is a euphemism for paying for the National Guard’s services and perhaps raising salaries and staffing levels to make the job more enticing, although the overall cost of keeping the Guard in place will probably be more than that.

So far the state has struggled to improve staffing levels. New employees can expect to make around $66,000 per year or $32 per hour. That rate increases over time until maxing out after 7 years at $42 per hour or $84,000 per year.

In addition, all guards receive comprehensive benefits including health insurance, paid time off and retirement plan options. Many also receive various bonuses for geographic inconvenience or hazardous duty, as well as a $3,000 sign-in bonus to encourage enlistment.

It would obviously save the state a lot of money to replace National Guard soldiers with regular employees, however, recruitment has lagged, in fact, the prisons remain dangerously understaffed. This no doubt adds to pressure to provide early parole for state prisoners as well as lenient sentences to those who commit the most serious crimes.

To combat that, the state has loosened up requirement for the job, reducing the minimum age for officers from 21 to 18, and allowing out-of-state people to apply, without first establishing residence in the state, but so far it has not made much of a dent in the problem.

To understand why the job is not sought after, it’s worth looking at what caused the strike in the first place. The understaffing of the prisons has been a chronic problem even before the strike. Officers were regularly working 12-hour shifts, with some forced to work 18 or 24 hours straight under increasingly dangerous conditions. It was reported that assaults by prisoners on Corrections Officer doubled in 2024 alone.

In addition to the usual demands for increased pay and better staffing, the unions were particularly upset over a 2021 law restricting solitary confinement of prisoners the so-called HALT Act (Humane Alternatives to Long Term Solitary Confinement.) See picture above.

In addition to limiting the total amount of time a prisoner could be kept in solitary to 15 consecutive days, it also set up a new system that gave inmates the right to a disciplinary hearing to appeal any order for solitary confinement. Guards say this new system altered the balance of power in the prisons and puts them in danger by not being able to quickly discipline unruly prisoners.

One of the strikers major demands was that the law be amended or repealed. Part of the strike settlement was a 90-day suspension of the HALT Act rules, and the formation of a committee to study the law. After the Committee released a report calling for reforms, Republicans in the New York State Assembly in Albany have introduced legislation to do just that, but in the Democrat-dominated State legislature the chances of passage are slim.

While the debate rages on, the NYS Department of Corrections has faced reality and has been dragging its feet on enforcing certain provisions of the law, but the prisons remain a silent powder keg ready to explode.

Note: The is article was compiled by reading online reports. If there is any inaccurate information, please let me know with a comment or email me directly at corrin07@gmail.com

Update: After posting this article to the Free NYS Telegram page, I received a comment from a person who prepares taxes who pointed out that there are additional tax benefits enjoyed by National Guard troops deployed to the prisons. Although military pay is not exempt from federal taxes when the Guard is called out by a state governor, in NY it is exempt from state taxes.

In addition, in some cases private employers that Guardsmen work for when not on duty may have policies to continue paying their regular salary or may “top up” any difference between the private salary and military pay. Although, as pointed out, the troops are being paid very generously, it is not clear if bonuses and other benefits are included in any calculation of pay differential.

Those arrangements will probably vary from company to company, however, one additional wrinkle is that, if a soldier does receive any differential pay it is exempt from regular Social Security, Medicare or Federal Unemployment taxes or withholding. Nice work if you can get it!

This horse leg shaped wooden club has been gathering dust on my mantle for at least 50 years and probably a lot longer. It is inscribed as a memento of the Battle of Five Forks
presented by Union Cavalry Gen. Phillip Sheridan, but is it?

My 3X Great Grandfather was Civil War General James Samuel Wadsworth of Geneseo, NY. He fought at Gettysburg, served as Military Governor of Washington, D.C. and was mortally wounded at the Wilderness.

His son, Gen. Craig W. Wadsworth, served in Gen. Sheridan’s cavalry during the Civil War. Although Gen. Craig did not fight in the crucial Battle of Five Forks, his younger brother, my 2X Great Grandfather did, although not in the cavalry. That battle finally broke the Confederate stronghold at Petersburg, Virginia and forced Gen. Robert E. Lee to retreat west into the Appalachian foothills, where he finally surrendered at Appomattox about a week later.

Gen. Craig died in 1872 from Tuberculous contracted while in service, two months before the birth of his second son, also named Craig. The younger Craig was a Rough Rider who rode up San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War with Teddy Roosevelt , and was a well-known sportsman around town in NYC around the turn of the Century. He later served as Ambassador to numerous countries.

I am descended from Gen. James’s youngest son, Brevet-Major James W. Wadsworth Sr., who later became a US Congressman. Congressman Wadsworth inherited his father’s home, The Hartford House, built by the General in Geneseo in 1835. The home remains in the family and I happen to be the 6th of the Wadsworth line to own it.

I give all this family history as background for a very odd mystery that I recently uncovered. For many years a curious artifact has been sitting on the mantle in the front hall of the house. (See picture above.)

The artifact claims to be a “Memento of the Battle of Five Forks.” It is a piece of wood in the shape of a horse’s leg with a silver horse shoe tacked on the hoof. On the upper end it has a silver cap that bears the following inscription:

This horse leg shaped club, a memento of the late Civil War is presented to
Surgeon Edwin T. Osbaldeston by General Phillip Sheridan,
Washington, DC
Oct. 18, 1886

A similar inscription appears on the bottom of the hoof

Below the Cap inscription is a further note that reads, “Also a Sitting Wolf in Bronze,” apparently referring to another supposed gift from Sheridan to the “Surgeon.” I have no knowledge of the Sitting Wolf bronze, or how this club ended up in the possession of my family, although I always assumed it had something to do with Gen. Craig’s service in Sheridan’s cavalry.

Last year, I consigned the item to a local auctioneer to see if he could come up with an estimated value for it. Since the Surgeon was not a family member, it had no great sentimental value for me.

Sam Cottone, of Cottone Auctions in Geneseo, researched it and came back with the surprising news that they could find no comparable items having been sold at auction. I had always assumed that if Sheridan, who was serving as Commanding General of the Army in 1886, was giving out mementos to some of his favorite officers, he would do more than just present one to a somewhat obscure Surgeon. In fact, further research could find no Civil War surgeons of that name. Strange!

Without a comparable sale, the Cottone’s were reluctant to put a high value on the item and suggested $1,500. For that price, I decided to keep it and put it back on the shelf.

I subscribe to a YouTube channel called “Life on the Civil War Research Trail” hosted by Ron Coddington, Editor and Publisher of Military Images Magazine. Recently, Ron presented a show about the Battle of Five Forks which reminded me of the item sitting on my mantle. I wrote to Ron and told him the story and asked if he knew anything about it. He provided the breakthrough information.

Ron recognized the “Surgeon’s” name and sent me a link to a book titled, “An Uncommon Criminal: The Extraordinary life of Edwin Turner Osbaldeston.” Apparently, ETO was one of the world’s most notorious con men, and his story was written up by two of his great-grandchildren, Kenson J. Siver and his sister Noel Siver.

A quick Internet search turned up that “Ken” was the current Mayor of Southfield, Michigan and his phone number. I left a message and a few days later he returned the call. The story he told about his very wicked ancestor was amazing.

In addition to claiming to be a Surgeon, ETO had a varied career, including stints
as a Turkish Bath attendant, masseur and a drill instructor.

Born to a lower class family in England in 1838, ETO was to travel the world. He joined the British Army and was stationed in Malta before deserting. He then spent time in Australia and New Zealand before an extended stay in NYC where he was based from 1880 to 1918. In New York he apparently held himself out as a Doctor and treated former President Ulysses S. Grant, although he had no formal medical training.

Everywhere he went, ETO left behind a trail of victims who were either scammed out of money or outright robbed. As described by his own kinfolk, ETO was, “a con man, burglar, arsonist, extortionist, and a murderer.” The murder occurred during an eventful stay in Germany from 1902-1903.

Apparently ETO was very convincing in passing himself off with multiple fake identities. He posed as a veteran of the Crimean War and claimed to have taken part in the famous Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava in 1854 and as a Surgeon in the American Civil War, neither of which was true.

Whenever his fake identities and schemes were found out, he simply moved to another town and started over with a new scam, which was a successful strategy before the age of the Internet. Although he was arrested multiple times, he never served much jail time for all his crimes (not even for murder!) as he either escaped from jail, absconded after being released on bail, or talked himself out of the jam.

Is it possible that he actually knew Gen. Sheridan, perhaps through his connection to President Grant who was a close associate? When Grant became head of the Union Army, he transferred Sheridan from head of the Infantry Division in the Western Theatre to head of the Army of the Potomac Calvary Corp. As such, he would surely have known both Generals Wadsworth and perhaps the Congressman as well. Sheridan’s cavalry played a major role in the victory at Five Forks and the subsequent pursuit of Lee.

Sheridan died in 1888 at age 57 after suffering a series of heart attacks, but of course there is no reason to assume that the date on the inscription is any more accurate than the rest of the information. It could have been created later, after Gen Sheridan was conveniently out of the way and not in a position to confirm or deny its authenticity.

I wrote to one of Sheridan’s biographers. but he had no knowledge of Sheridan ever having any contact with ETO or of any other horse-leg mementos, so the origin of the artifact remains a mystery. It seems unlikely that Sheridan had anything do with it, but it does fit a pattern of ETO having very authentic-looking accoutrements as part of his scams. For example, to bolster his claim of being the last survivor of The Charge of the Light Brigade he often wore a Crimean War medal. How he got it or whether he made it himself is unknown.

Three men who may have had something to do with the club’s presence in Geneseo.
From left: Ambassador Craig Wadsworth, Congressman James W. Wadswoth, Sr
(My great-great grandfather) and Jim Sam Wadsworth.

As far as how the memento got to Geneseo, I suspect Ambassador Craig, his older brother Jim Sam, or perhaps, my 2X Great Grandfather, Congressman James W. Wadworth Sr. might have been involved. Craig was a man about town in NYC during the period when ETO was living there.

As the son of one of Gen. Sheridan’s officers, he might have been an easy mark for such an “historic relic. “He later returned to Geneseo in 1927 after his service as an Ambassador and lived there until his death in 1960.

I know less about Craig’s older brother, named for his famous grandfather, but nicknamed “Jim Sam,” who was born in 1870. He saw service in Europe during the First World War as a Captain of the 27th Division fighting in Belgium and France, including in the deadly Somme Offensive. According to family lore, he was something of a scammer himself. Perhaps he got mixed up with some of ETO’s schemes. Jim Sam, who was also an avid sportsman and rider, died in 1930.

Finally, Congressman James was in office from 1881-85 and again from 1891-1907. Did he run into ETO somewhere in his travels? As a veteran of Five Forks, he certainly would have had an interest in the supposed relic.

We may never know the answers to all these questions. Those who knew the origin of the artifact, and how it came into the family, are long gone, so all we can do is speculate! What do you think happened?

Note: This is a ongoing investigation and this article may be updated if more information becomes available.

A typical panel on the Kill Tony Show from left: Shane Gillis as Donald Trump,
Adam Ray as Joe Biden, Joe Rogan, Host Tony Hinchcliffe and Producer Brian Redban.

For many of us, Tony Hinchcliffe first came to national attention when he told a disparaging joke about Puerto Rico at the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden in 2024. Anti-Trump partisans tried to make it into a political issue, but the decision to invite Tony to speak was actually strategically brilliant.

Tony may have been unknown to a large part of the fuddy-duddy audience who pay attention to political conventions, but he is a major force among the younger generation that watch online videos. His “Kill Tony” podcast has been building an audience with a weekly show on YouTube and other platforms since 2013.

The show is currently based at the Comedy Mothership, Joe Rogan’s Comedy Club in Austin, Texas. Each week Tony randomly pulls names out of a hat and offers rising comedians 1 minute to “kill” him, his celebrity guests and a large studio audience with their humor.

If the set goes really well, the comedians are awarded a “Golden Ticket” and will be invited back for further appearances, or in rare occasion become a part of the celebrity panel. Since the show is not shown on network TV, all manner of obscenity and bad taste are encouraged, within the limits of YouTube’s much looser standards.

Being a hit on Kill Tony is today’s equivalent of a young comic being introduced on the old Johnny Carson Show and being invited back to sit on the couch after performing a stellar set. Because of its reach of over 3 million views per weekly episode, not to mention millions more short replays on YouTune reels and other platforms, the show has launched many careers.

Black comedian Kam Patterson has parlayed a cult following on Kill Tony into a spot as a regular on Saturday Night Live, and there are many more who have gone from obscurity to selling out large venues on the strength of killing Tony.

I am often surprised when I mention how enjoyable the show is to my Boomer friends that none of them have even heard of it. I don’t watch the full Monday Night Shows, but my YouTube feed is filled with short clips of the Best of Tony. I don’t think I even subscribed to the channel, but with YouTube’s algorithms, once you watch one reel they get you hooked!

The show also seems to favor performers with autism and other disabilities. There have been blind comedians and others in wheel chairs, but a special place of honor has been reserved for those on the spectrum.

The show also attracts many aspiring comedians from around the world. Regular performers include Ari Matti from Estonia, Orhen Timur from Turkey and Yaqui Yang from China.

One of the biggest stars is comedian Adam Ray who in addition to doing a perfectly clueless Joe Biden, does such a great Dr. Phil impression that you have to look twice to make sure it’s not the real thing. Some of his other impressions include Elon Musk and a spot-on take on the host Tony Hinchcliffe.

In addition to being a regular on the panel he will often tryout new characters pretending to be a first-time bucket pull. One of his greatest creations is Randolph Davies, supposedly a former roadie for 35 years for The Counting Crows. His make-up and portrayal are so convincing that he even fooled some show regulars who didn’t recognize him. I will leave you with the link below to his first hilarious appearance. Caution: Some profanity and adult situations!

Andrew Doyle, the British Comedian who created the wildly successful
parody Twitter account of Titania McGrath

As I slowly come out of my Lyme-induced brain fog, I am still struggling to come up with good column ideas. Fortunately, the death of a satirical writer that I had never heard of in “Jolly Old England^TM,” provided great fodder from one of the best comedy writers on the planet, Tatania McGrath* (AKA Andrew Doyle.)

Rod Liddle was apparently one of those iconoclasts who wrote whatever he felt like and didn’t give a damn whether he offended people. My kind of guy! Apparently his death a few weeks ago at the untimely age of 66 was celebrated by what we call the literal-minded, those who could not recognize a joke to save their lives.

These people have been the bane of my existence, ever since I first sat down at a word processor and wrote for public consumption over 40 years ago. They also haunt me in real life, but more on that later!

On first awakening this morning at my usual time of 3 am, after my regular 5 hours of sleep, I groggily reached for my phone and was greeted by these opening words from Andrew’s latest Substack:

“It would be far better for society if we were to execute the literal-minded. We could do it discreetly, under cover of night, so as not to upset their relatives. Instead of scouring social media for potentially offensive posts, the police could be enlisted to identify anyone who takes an obvious joke at face value. No trial. No appeal. Just toss them into a volcano and be done with it!”

Now if such sublime writing does not get you roaring with laughter, I am sorry to say that you are among those who should be tossed into a volcano, and probably should stop reading right now before you are further triggered! As eminently reasonable as Andrew’s “modest proposal**” is, however, there is just one problem with it. If we killed everybody who lacked a sense of humor, there would be no one left to do the drudge work of wasting our time and our tax money.

As I said, I run into this on an almost daily basis in my real life. For example, just yesterday, since I am still suffering some mobility problems from my Lyme, I decided to go through the drive-thru teller window at a local bank. The name of the bank and the branch shall remain nameless to protect the guilty.

For me, I’ve always been uncomfortable in that awkward time between when you are greeted by the teller and you have all your paperwork ready to submit. Naturally, I came unprepared, as going through the drive-thru was a last-minute decision, (which come to think of it, is a pretty good description of my life in general!) To dispel that awkwardness, I hazarded a small, admittedly-feeble joke.

I was planning to deposit a single hundred dollar bill, so I slid it into the tray and suggested to the very sober young lady that she could count that while I was filling out my deposit ticket. She looked at me like I was trying to rob the place!

“It’s a joke,” I tried to helpfully suggest, but apparently such a concept was foreign to her. “I can’t just take money without a deposit slip,” she explained stone-faced. And true to her word, when the drawer was rolled back open for my documents, there was my crisp untouched Benjamin!

To be clear, for the literal-minded out there, I don’t really want to see this bank teller thrown in a volcano. She seemed like a perfectly nice young lady, and in her defense, I’ve noticed that that particular branch seems somewhat paranoid about cash.

Whenever I deposit a large amount inside, they bring over a second teller to approve of the transaction, as if they were afraid that the first teller would pocket the money if they were not watched. Well, I suppose it is hard to find good help these days!

I will confess that people being unable to tell when I am joking has been a problem for me all my life. I think it is because of my dry delivery. I usually don’t give away the joke by laughing or even the hint of a smile.

I expect people to understand that I am joking*** by the absurdity of what I say, but I guess the world is so crazy now that people are prepared to accept the most absurd statements as possibly true. That reminds me of an early song by the Bee Gees, which reached #6 on the American Top 40 charts in 1968:

“I started a joke,
which started the whole world crying.
But I didn’t see,
That the joke was on me.”

* Tatania McGrath is the fictional alter-ego of Anglo-Irish**** comedian Andrew Doyle, who became famous for her uber-woke rants on her parody Twitter account back in the day. The rants were so realistic that many people thought she was a real person. Titania still makes an occasional appearance, as she did to celebrate the death of Mr. Liddle in a recent newspaper article titled, “Good riddance, Rod.” (Unfortunately, most of Titania’s no-doubt brilliant article is behind a paywall, as unfortunately, is Mr. Doyle’s Substack, but they are at least worth clicking through to read what you can for free!)

** “A Modest Proposal” was a famous satirical work by another great Anglo-Irish writer, Jonathan Swift. The full title of the 1729 essay was, “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.” In it, Swift suggested that the best use of the poor children would be to sell them for food! No doubt Swift’s deadpan suggestion was met with outrage by the literal-minded people of that time.

*** A good rule of thumb, in both my writing and in person, is that if you assume that I am joking you will be right about 90% of the time.

****Anglo-Irish refers to an ethnic, social and religious group consisting mostly of the descendants of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, mainly in Northern Ireland, although it can include some Catholics such as Andrew who grew up in Derry. There, you can’t say you didn’t learn anything here today!

And now back to bed!

Remember this rash that I wrote about back on June 26?
The test results are in!

My lady friend often accuses me of having a Golden Horseshoe stuck somewhere where the sun don’t shine, and it’s true! I am one of the luckiest people I know. Don’t hate me if I’m lucky, I can’t help it!

It’s not that I don’t have my fair share of trouble, it’s just that when I do have a problem or screw something up, (which is frequent!) something, or some person, always comes along to solve it– Pure dumb luck, I guess!

About 6 weeks ago I got bitten by something and developed the telltale “bullseye rash” of a Lyme tick on my leg. (See picture above) Last week I got a Lyme test and to my surprise, it came back positive. Ordinarily that might be considered bad luck, but wait, as Paul Harvey used to say, for “the rest of the story!”

You see I was having a lot of mysterious symptoms this year even before I was bitten. It started with brain fog in the late winter. I was struggling to remember people’s names and sometimes the wrong words came out of my mouth. This is not too bad for a writer, but not good for a video performer, when you don’t realize that you misspoke until hours later when you are editing the video!

At age 75, you could perhaps chalk that up to normal creeping senility, but it scared me enough to seek home remedies. I read somewhere that Creatine was good for the memory so I bought a can and added it to my morning coffee (after it cooled.) I did that for over a month, but my fog kept getting worse so I stopped!

My sister mentioned the danger of microplastics, so I stopped using Keurig cups to make my morning brew. I traded in the soft plastic containers for a hard plastic re-fillable one. Now if only I could remember to put the coffee mug under the machine!

In April, when the outdoor tennis season started, the physical symptoms began. I experienced severe fatigue and muscle weakness in my legs. It took me much longer to recover from a tennis match, and I had to cut the number of times I played a week back from three to two to one, but even that was not enough. I got so weak that I could barely walk 100 yards.

Finally, about the time my rash appeared in late June, I went to see my favorite sports medicine expert (and Chiropractor) Dr. Jeremy Lee. I didn’t want any treatment from him, I just wanted a consultation on what the heck was wrong with me. He wondered if it could be Lyme, and suggested I be tested.

If I didn’t have that big rash on my leg, I probably would have ignored that advice and continue to seek self-remedies. I had a very busy winter and didn’t make it to the gym for my regular workouts. Perhaps I was just out of shape?

I forced myself to resume my work-outs, even though I was noticeably weaker in the amount of weight I could lift, repetitions I could do and even how long I could last on the exercise bike, although I did feel a little better after each workout for a few days.

All kinds of other theories popped into my mind. The symptoms were very much like a condition called “Claudication,” which is often caused by Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD). Since I have 3 stents in my heart, perhaps now my leg arteries were clogging up! I even went so far as to get a referral to see a circulatory specialist, but never followed through and booked an appointment.

I had been complaining of my brain fog to my doctor all year, and in early June he ordered tests of Thyroid function and B-12, which is apparently the standard protocol for older folks suffering from memory loss. Both of which came back as normal, which demonstrates the problem with Lyme, it often gets overlooked or misdiagnosed.

In late June, I had a tele-appointment with my Doctor’s office about my rash, and they ordered a 10-day treatment of Doxycycline antibiotic. I confess that, part of the secret of my good health is that I am not a very good patient, so I only took the medicine for 5 days. After all, I had never seen a rash before, so I figured the Lyme bad guys wouldn’t be that hard to knock out.

The Lyme test was scheduled for a month later to supposedly give the antibodies a chance to appear. I fully expected to get a negative result, but if you are better at reading between the lines than I am, you probably realize that if I had tested immediately it probably would have tested positive back then. In my defense, I had been suffering from brain fog, so maybe I wasn’t thinking that clearly!

In the meantime, a funny thing happened while waiting to take the test. My extreme fatigue gradually went away and the strength in my legs returned. I was able to go back to playing tennis 3 times a week with no ill effects, and even my mental fog started to lift!

At first I chalked that up to my resumed gym attendance, but when the Lyme test came back positive, I began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Most likely, all the symptoms I was having this year were the result of a prior Lyme infection. By taking the antibiotic, it apparently knocked back the symptoms, even though I didn’t realize that’s what I had. Just lucky, I guess!

Finally, this morning I looked it up and discovered that it often happens that people do not notice a rash when they get infected. The first signs are more likely mental fog and fatigue. Bingo!

Luckily, in my one concession to old age, I had already decided last year to cut back on my Farmer’s Market schedule and not attend any until August. On Saturday, August 1, I attended the Perry Market and this Thursday I will return to the Geneseo Market. Everything went smoothly on Saturday and fatigue was not an issue. I never could have done that in June or early July before the antibiotic treatments kicked in.

My only problem was that horsing around a 50 lb. refrigerator to carry my latest product (Artisan Cheese) was a little more than I could handle. I’m going to be looking to install some dolly wheels so I can roll that thing back and forth off and on my truck. When you get to my age, you have to learn to use mind over matter- if you still have one!

See you at the market, and don’t forget to try a free sample of the cheese. It’s made the old-fashioned way by the Amish and it’s delicious!

P.S. My Doctor’s office says that they are going to do further tests to find out whether my Lyme is of recent or older origin. Not sure how they do that, but I am pretty sure I know the answer! Of course, I have been wrong before! I will report back in the comments when I get that result.

The woman I live with (who prefers to be known as “my keeper”) has absolutely no interest in politics. In fact, she claims that if she had known how much of a political junkie I was, she never would have gotten mixed up with me in the first place!

Just to demonstrate her abysmal ignorance of how the political world works, yesterday she seriously asked me if there were two Houses of Congress! Nevertheless there was one recent news event that did raise her ire.

“Did you know that Anthony Fauci refused to answer any questions in a Senate hearing?”

“Yes Dear, I know all about it.”

“I think he should be shot. Just taken out and shot!”

I told her, that I have been of that opinion for going on 6 years now, although probably a public hanging on the National Mall would be better, with his body left to twist in the wind as a warning to other weasels in our government.

I can remember when questioning the Great Lord of Science was considered sacrilege. It resulted in many online battles from those taken in by His Fraudulence, but I knew from the get-go that he was full of canal water.

Lying about the origin of the Wuhan virus, Sen. Paul’s bugaboo, is the least of Fauci’s sins. It’s kind of like taking Al Capone down for tax evasion. Fauci literally has the premature deaths and unnecessary suffering of millions of people around the world on his hands. He makes Stalin, Hitler and Mao look like Minor Leaguers!

But surely you are exaggerating Corrin? Not one bit!

It was Fauci who worked behind the scenes to clear the way for an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Covid vaccinations. In order to legally qualify for that extraordinary designation, which allowed the clot shot to be approved without the normal safety testing, he had to show that there were no other effective treatments for the disease.

This is why he organized efforts to discredit Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, deriding the first as horse medicine and the latter as akin to injecting bleach. Even before the vax came out, many people died or suffered prolonged illness because they were denied Ivermectin, in fact, many families had to sue to try to force Doctors to use the wonder drug on their very ill loved ones.

It was also Fauci who pushed the use of Remdesivir as the only approved treatment for Covid sufferers. Unfortunately, it had the small side effect of killing many of the people on ventilators that it was tried on. He probably knew, or should have known, it was not effective against Covid, but it was just one more step towards proving that no good treatments existed.

All of this death and suffering was OK with Dr. Fauci, however, because it moved the ball closer to the ultimate goal of getting a EUA for the vaccine. Then the real killing could begin and people like Fauci could cash in on the mRNA technology.

We may never know how many millions of people died prematurely as a result of the mania for taking the Covid gene therapies. Some died almost immediately after the shot, others suffered various nerve and circulatory damage for years before dying a painful death. We may have to wait generations to calculate the final toll.

What we do know is that in many cases the risk from the treatment was far worse than the risk of the disease. A case in point was young healthy children who were at practically no serious risk from Covid infection. Many of them will now have to deal with various cardiomyopathies and other illnesses for the rest of their lives, if they can lead a full lifespan at all.

Despite strong evidence otherwise, it is still being claimed that the mRNA injected is just a temporary molecule that quickly breaks down after doing its job of triggering antibodies. It seems more likely that the mRNA hangs around and continues to generate Spike Proteins for years after the injection.

Whether that gene can be passed down to future generations is not yet clear, but it seem obvious at this point that the wholesale approval of untested vaccines, strongly encouraged and coerced on billions of people around the world is not the way to conduct a clinical trial. You can thank Dr. Fauci for that.

No, come to think of it, hanging is too humane. Can we draw and quarter him?

This meme is often seen in Conservative circles, but I always challenge it!

For the first time in weeks we are having a rainy day here in WNY, so I was thinking about writing a new column about people’s blind spots when it comes to understanding the Psy-Op World we live in. A tentative title of “How long has this been going on?” popped into my head, but something sounded vaguely familiar about that.

A quick search revealed that I had already written a column by that name over a year ago in May of 2025. After going back and re-reading that, I concluded that I had made some good points, but there was still more to say on the subject.

There is a meme (above) that you may have seen that tries to tie all the major Assassinations in American History and other bad things to leftists and the Democrat Party. Although I have as little regard for the present-day Democrats (or leftists) as any Conservative, I always hesitate when they get to Lee Harvey Oswald. I know too much about that case, as I have been studying it for most of my life.

I am not interested in re-arguing all the reasons why I believe that Oswald was a patsy who was set up to take the fall by forces much bigger than him. If you don’t understand that, I could refer you to another of my past articles and videos where I lay that case out.

The question I want to explore today is, why do so many people, who realize how much the Deep State of today lies and manipulates, lose that perspective when we go a little further back in history? Do they really believe that the government lying to us about practically everything only started in 2020? Did they sleep through the Vietnam War and 9/11?

I believe there is probably overwhelming majority support among Conservatives today (and maybe even a few moderates) for the following propositions:

1. As President Trump said the other night, the 2020 and perhaps other American elections were stolen with the help of adversary countries.

2. The steal was known about and assisted by U.S. Intelligence Agencies who kept it hidden from President Trump and the general public.

3. The Covid Pandemic was perhaps created, but certainly intentionally hyped up as part of that effort to force the country to adopt paper ballots which could be more easily used for fraud.

4. The Covid vaccination was neither “Safe” nor Effective,”

5. The Main Stream Media and controlled Internet services, working at the behest of the Deep State, have constantly reinforced all these lies.

At this late date, I don’t see how any of these facts can even be debated by any sentient being who has been paying attention for the last 7 years. Those who doubt these facts are obviously still under the sway of a massive propaganda campaign, or know they are true, but don’t care!

Why then are these same people who understand how perfidious our current Deep State is, so myopic when it comes to looking at earlier periods of our history? I could make an even longer list of statements about Oswald and the JFK Assassination that seem equally obvious to me:

1. Lee Harvey Oswald was recruited out of the Marine Corp, trained by Intelligence Agencies and sent to the Soviet Union as an American Spy.

2. Upon his return he continued to be employed by Intelligence agencies in a number of operations.

3. His involvement in New Orleans as a one-man branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in the summer of 1963 was part of an undercover operation.

4. Oswald was impersonated in his supposed trip to the Cuban and Russian Embassies in Mexico City in the fall of 1963.

5. The fact that the CIA station in Mexico City misrepresented Oswald’s activities there indicates foreknowledge of the Assassination and a plan to frame Oswald.

6. JFK was stuck by at least two bullets from the front, and JFK and Connally were struck by at least two bullets from the back, so there were multiple shooters.

7. There was not enough time for Oswald to have walked from his rooming house, kill Officer Tippet and made it to the Texas Theatre when he reportedly arrived there.

8. JFK’s body was removed illegally from Texas by the Secret Service without the required autopsy done in Dallas, even though in 1963 it was not a federal crime to kill a President.

9. The JFK autopsy done at the Bethesda Naval Hospital was highly irregular and important photographs and X-rays from it were either doctored or went missing.

10. VP Lyndon Johnson had the most to gain from the Assassination. Not only did he ascend to the Presidency, but he was able to end investigations of his criminal corruption which could have resulted in his indictment, conviction and imprisonment, but would have almost certainly ended his political career.

11. The Warren Commission was set up by LBJ to have an investigation that he and his buddy, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, could control, and former CIA Director Allen Dulles (who was fired by JFK after the Bay of Pigs fiasco) was placed on the Commission to make sure that Oswald’s intelligence connections were kept hidden.

There’s a lot more evidence of Oswald’s innocence in the whole affair, but that conclusion relies on some interpretation of the facts. The above statements are incontrovertible, and yet, they seem to short circuit the minds of many Conservatives who want to believe that Oswald was a Communist who acted alone.

We should not use dubious historical claims as ammunition in the current partisan battles between left and right. The politics of today have very little to do with the politics of 60 years ago, in fact, if JFK were alive today, his views would be considered closer to Conservative than Progressive.

The killing of JFK was a classic false flag event. It was done by, or with the assistance of, officials of our own government, with the intent of blaming it on our Cold War adversaries the USSR and Cuba. By linking the purported assassin to those two countries, they probably hoped to justify a long-wished invasion of Cuba or even a first strike against Russia.

Although LBJ ultimately did not pursue those actions, he was able to use the threat of nuclear war to force the Warren Commission to accept his lone gunman cover story. JFK may have been killed by Democrats, but most likely it was ordered and organized at a much higher level than Lee Oswald.

They have lied about this and hidden the evidence for over 60 years. Don’t let them get away with it!

I include this chart at the top because I realize a lot of people
will not want to slog through a 7,000-word article!

Before I get to the explanation of my list, here is how this crazy idea came to me. Recently I posted a video on a Dylan Facebook page about Bob’s song “Floater” off his 2001 “Love and Theft “ album. One commenter said that it was his favorite Dylan song. This surprised me as the song is kind of an obscure deep cut. (Later I realized that there is no Dylan song so obscure that it will not be somebody’s favorite!)

In response I wrote that I had so many favorite Dylan songs that I would have trouble narrowing them down to my Top 20. After I thought about that for a while, I decided to give it a try, but quickly realized that I would need to pick at least 50, and even that would leave dozens of great songs out!

I have been a Bob Dylan fan off and on for over 60 years. What I mean by that is, that while I loved his music over all that period, there were long stretches when I did not follow every new album and song. That period started somewhere in the late 1970s and ended with the release of his brilliant 1997 album “Time out of Mind.”

During that period, I listened to some, but not all of his new music. I really didn’t listen to much of his “Born-Again” music in the early 1980s, but I did become obsessed with his 1985 “Empire Burlesque” album, although not until about 10 years after it came out.

That album was derided by some critics as “Disco Dylan,” but I loved the upbeat arrangements, the gospel choir of back-up singers and the solid Jamaican rhythm section of Sly Dunbar on drums and Robbie Shakespeare on bass.

Obsession is a good way to describe my reaction to most of the songs on this list. These are songs that I can listen to over and over and never get tired of hearing. In earlier days, I could listen to “Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands” from the 1966 Blonde on Blonde album over and over, I think because I could never figure out what it was about, and at over 11 minutes long it was mesmerizing.

Often it was just a line or two of his brilliant lyrics that would keep me coming back, and in that one it was the chorus, “My warehouse eyes my Arabian drums, should I put them by your gate?” What does it mean? I have no clue!

Dylan went through many genres, starting as a folk and protest singer in the early 1960s, famously going electric with Blues and Rock n’ Roll in 1965, and then taking a swerve into Country, Americana and then Gospel. Each time he changed, some of his fans were unhappy, but it never stopped him from continuing to evolve, try out new genres and ultimately incorporate everything into a style that is uniquely his own.

While most people are familiar with his early music, say up to the “Blonde on Blonde” album in 1966, as I have aged, I find the more mature music of his later period since 1997 to be most compelling. There are also some great, and perhaps lesser known songs, that came out during his long middle period from 1967-1997 as well.

Four years ago I started a YouTube music reaction channel with my friend Howard Appell, who is also a huge Dylan fan. (Originally called Old Men in Chairs). We did reactions to a few of Bob’s songs before Howard had to retire due to health reasons. I continued to react on my own and did a bunch more Dylan songs over the years.

I started to notice that while many of the contemporary songs I reacted to did well for a few weeks and then petered out, the Dylan songs had legs and continued to draw viewers for years after. An example of that was the little-known “Brownsville Girl” from his 1986 album, “Knocked out loaded.” After a slow start in 2022, it is now my most-viewed Dylan song with over 7,000 views on my main channel, (Now call The Clarion Call.)

Taking note of that, in May of 2024 I started a separate YouTube channel for all my Dylan reactions called Deciphering Dylan. This turned out to be a good move since my main channel seems to be increasingly throttled by YouTube, presumably because of my political views. Luckily they haven’t extended the shadow banning to the second channel, yet!

As I began to focus more on Dylan, I began to discover some (but not all) of the songs from his middle period that I had missed at the time. My goal is to react to at least one of his original songs from each of his over 30 studio albums. So far I have only done a song from about half of the albums, although from some of my favorite albums I have done as many as 4.

Complicating my ratings, is that some of his greatest songs, or the best versions of songs, never made it onto any official album, but have only been dribbling out on “Bootleg,” albums in recent years. These are of course not real bootlegs, but official releases of outtakes and sometimes incomplete versions of songs that were never finished. Many of these “outtakes” made my list.

Finally, before I get to my list, let me be clear about what this list is not. This is not a list of Dylan’s Most Popular or even his “Best” songs. That list might look entirely different and include classics like ‘Blowing in the Wind” and “The Times They are A-Changing”. This is purely a personal list of songs that for various reasons, I love to listen to, with some of my favorite lyrics highlighted.

Not counting outtakes and alternate versions, it is estimated that Bob has written over 600 songs in his career. I am not a Dylanologist who can claim to be familiar with all of that output, so there may be some great songs out there that I have not yet discovered. If I do become obsessed with any, I will update my rankings. As always, your mileage may vary!
(Note: Blue links are to my videos of which I have done 32 of these 50 songs, so far, although I have noticed that all the links do not display in blue in the Substack on my iPhone. Sorry!)

1. Tangled up in Blue
   (Blood on the Tracks, 1975)
   ”But all the while I was alone,
   the past was close behind
   I seen a lot of women,
   But she never escaped my mind.”

   
   This is my all-time favorite Dylan song and it is not even close. It was the lead song and the only single released from what is arguably his greatest album, and certainly set the tone for that most confessional of albums. Bob said that the song “took him 10 years to live and two years to write.” I think we have all lived at least parts of this song!

   The song is a tour-de-force of Dylan’s ability to switch time frames and even narrators. I have rather a unique interpretation of the song that I have not seen anywhere else.

2. Brownsville Girl
   (Knocked Out Loaded, 1986)

   “How far you all going?” Ruby asked us with a sigh,
   ”We’re going all the way until the wheels fall off and burn.
   Until the sun peels the paint and the seat covers fade,
   and the water moccasin dies.”

   This 11-minute epic song was almost lost on one of Bob’s least-admired albums. My only regret is that I never heard the song until 3 years ago when I instantly fell in love with it. I could have been enjoying it for almost 40 years if only I had known about it.
   An early version of the song that he worked on for the Empire Burlesque album was called “New Danville Girl” after the Woody Guthrie song, until Bob re-wrote parts with the help of playwright Sam Shepherd and punched up the production. Some critics have disliked Bob’s mid-80s Wall of Sound approach, with the gospel singer chorus and a wailing saxophone replacing the harmonica on the original version, but I love it.
   BTW One of the most active debates in the comment section of my video is what the phrase, “until the water moccasin dies” means! (In this case, the link goes to my original channel so you can participate in that debate and read all the other insightful comments!)
   

3. Mississippi
   (Love and Theft) 2001

   I was thinking about the things that Rosie said.
   I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie’s bed.

   
   This may be Dylan’s greatest song of the 21st Century, although he originally worked on it for the 1997 Time Out of Mind album. The key line that ends every verse, “Only one thing I did wrong, stayed in Mississippi a day too long,” was taken from an early folk song “Rosie.” In the lines quoted above, he name-checks Rosie in one of my all-time favorite Dylan lines, for who has not dreamed of being in a former lover’s bed?

4. Like A Rolling Stone
   (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)
   You’ve gone to the finest school all right
   Miss Lonely, but you know you only used to get juiced in it.

   

   A meme I made about Bob Dylan’s historic appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival
   
   This is the first song I ever heard from Bob Dylan in the Summer of 1965. It was an electric moment that is seared into my memory. I have not yet done a full ‘deciphering “ video of the song, but the link leads to a video in which I compared Bob’s original to 4 covers by Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Bob Marley & the Wailers, and a version by the singer Seal with Jeff Beck on the guitar, and asked who did it best? You get three guesses and the first two don’t count!
   Rightfully a perennial contender in lists of the Greatest Songs in Rock n’ Roll history, the song introduced a new voice that many are still struggling to appreciate. I am sorry to report that Dylan has many critics, especially about his voice, which many consider too nasal. It is a commonplace for many to opine that, “Dylan is a good songwriter, but he can’t sing.” This is a position that I violently disagree with, and in fact, I recently wrote a 3,500-word Substack refuting it, titled, “Bob Dylan is the true Voice of America.” (Also available as a Podcast here.)

5. Red River Shore
   (Outtake from Time Out of Mind, 1997)

   We’re living in the shadows of a fading past.
   Trapped in the fires of time.

   One of the great mysteries of Bob’s career is how he could he leave so many of his great songs off his albums. This one should have been on the Time out of Mind album, but was pulled at the last minute, and was never heard until the Tell Tale Signs bootleg came out 10 years later.
   I’ve always thought that this song is written about the same girl as one of his most famous early songs, “Girl from the North Country.” With the advantage of 35 more years of experience, he absolutely crushes it.
   

6. Born in Time
   (Alternate version from Oh Mercy, 1989)

   In the hills of mystery

   In the foggy web of destiny

   You’re still so deep inside of me

   When we were born in time.

   Again, Bob left the best version of this song off the “Oh Mercy” album and then inexplicably put a much weaker version on the “Under the Red Sky” album in 1990. This perfect version came out on the Tell Tale Signs Bootleg 18 years later. Apparently a lot of people agree with my assessment of this song as it recently became the most-viewed song ever on my Dylan channel after only a month!

7. Idiot Wind
   (Blood on the Tracks, 1975)
   Live in Fort Collins, Co.

   You hurt the ones that I love best

   You cover up the truth with lies.

   One day you’ll be in the ditch,

   flies buzzing around your eyes

   blood on your saddle.

   There is nobody who can express vitriol better than Bob. He demonstrated it in a lot of his earlier songs such as “Masters of War” where his target was the Military Industrial Complex, and “Positively 4th Street,” where he lampooned those who were jealous of his rise to fame. In this song his target is much more personal as it appears to be aimed at his soon-to-be ex-wife, Sara, the mother of 4 of his children.
   In my video reaction I chose a live version from 1976 at which apparently Sara was sitting in the front row. Can you say awkward?

8. High Water (For Charlie Patton)
   (Love and Theft, 2001)

   You dance with who they tell you to

   or you don’t dance at all

   This seems like the perfect song to be released on 9/11/2001, as it almost predicts the chaos of that day. Ostensibly about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, it is obviously also about a lot more current events. I love the banjo in this song!

9. Tryin’ to Get to Heaven

   (Time Out of Mind, 1997)

   I was riding in a buggy with Miss Mary Jane,

   Miss Mary Jane’s got a house in Baltimore

   Another great song about the loss of love and how it can leave a person feeling like there is only one more goal in life: “to get to heaven before they close the door.” I much prefer this complicated later song to one of Bob’s most popular hits “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” released on the Billy the Kid movie sound track in 1973. Proving that my list is not based on popularity, this and the previous entry do not have 100 views between them on my Dylan channel, but I still love them!

10. All Along the Watchtower
    (John Wesley Harding, 1967)

    There are many here among us

    who think that life is but a joke.

    This is one of Bob’s most mysterious songs. Nobody really knows who the Joker and the Thief are, and many think the verses are out of order and that the last verse should be first. Jimi Hendrix’s cover was so good that even Bob admitted it was better and subsequently changed his arrangement to follow Jimi’s when he performs it live. In the linked video I analyze both Bob’s original and Jimi’s cover and ask, “Who did it best?”

11. Tight Connection to my Heart
    (Has Anybody seen my Love?)
    (Empire Burlesque, 1985)

    I never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine.

    I never could learn to hold you love and call you mine.

    This song received a lot of criticism, not only for its disco beat, but also because Bob apparently borrowed a lot of the lyrics from lines from classic movies. I don’t care. I absolutely love this song and can listen to it over and over. There was an early version called “Someone’s got a hold of my heart,” which was being worked on for the 1983 Infidels album but was not used. It eventually came out on a Bootleg, and in my opinion, is nowhere near as good.

12. Workingman’s Blues #2
    (Modern Times 2006)

    No man, no woman knows

    the hour when sorrow comes

    Another of those Dylan songs that I never get tired of listening to. It borrows one line from Merle Haggard’s 1969 Country Hit, “Workin’ Man Blues,” but then goes in a completely different direction. When Merle heard about Dylan copping his title he said, “Good! Now I can record “Blowing in the Wind #2.!“
    Merle and Bob toured together in 2005 and did 113 shows together, of which I was fortunate to see 2. In the linked video I react to both artists very different versions of the song.

13. Tears of Rage
    (Basement Tapes, 1975)

    Oh, what kind of love is this

    which goes from bad to worse?

    The Basement Tapes officially came out in 1975, but of course most of the songs were actually recorded back in 1967, when Bob was holed up with members of The Band at the house known as Big Pink in the Catskill Mountains of New York. The words were written by Bob with music by Richard Manuel of the Band. The band included their version of the song on their first album, “Music from Big Pink” in 1968, but I prefer Bob’s version. I have a different interpretation from many (including members of The Band) as to what the song is really about.

14. I’ve Made up my Mind to Give Myself to You
    (Rough & Rowdy Ways, 2020)

    Well, my hearts like a river,

    a river that sings.

    Just takes me a while

    to realize things.

    Bob surprised the world when he came out with a new album of original tunes in 2020 at age 79 called, “Rough and Rowdy Ways.” For my money this is one of Bob’s best love songs in his 60-plus year career, and his voice is in fine form. Some have thought that the person Bob is “giving himself to” is actually Jesus, but I tend to discount such interpretations in any songs not made during his “Born Again” period from 1979-1981.

15. Queen Jane Approximately

    (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)

    When your mother sends back all your invitations,

    And your father to your sister he explains

    That you’re tired of yourself

    and all of your creations.

    This is the second, but far from the last, song from Highway 61 Revisited to make my list, and in fact, I would have had no trouble including all the songs on that great album on my favorite list. This is Dylan at the very top of his early electric form. I particularly enjoy the live version that he did with the Grateful Dead, and may eventually react to that one.

16. If You See Her Say Hello
    (Blood on the Tracks, 1975)

    We had a falling out

    as lovers often will

    And to think of how she left that night

    still gives me a chill.

    Blood on the Tracks, Highway 61 Revisited and Love and Theft, all have three songs that made the Top 20 in my list, as it’s hard to find a bad track on any of those great albums. Among many other things, Bob is a great chronicler of the pain of lost love, and this song may be one of his most heart-breaking.

17. Ballad of a Thin Man

    (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)

    You’ve been with the professors

    and they’ve all liked your looks

    With great lawyers you’ have discussed

    lepers and crooks

    This is one of the greatest put-downs ever recorded in popular music. Although the actual identity of “Mr. Jones” has never been revealed, it is assumed that he is a stand-in for all the square reporters asking stupid questions in Bob’s early press conferences. “There’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”

18. Sugar Baby
    (Love and Theft, 2001)

    I’m staying with Aunt Sally,

    but you know she’s not really my aunt.

    Another, more gentle, put-down of a former lover, as he tells her, “You ain’t got no brains no how.” The line about Aunt Sally may actually be a reference to Huck Finn, who passed himself off as Tom Sawyer when he showed up at Tom’s aunt’s house.

19. Blind Willie McTell

    (Outtake Infidels, 1983)

    Well God is in heaven

    and we all want what’s his

    But power and greed

    and corruptiple seed

    seem to be all that there is

    This song is generally acknowledged to be the greatest Dylan song that never made it on to an official album, and many feels it is one of his greatest songs ever. Originally worked on for the 1983 Infidels albums, it was not released until his first Bootleg series in 1991. Since then, no one has been able to figure out how such a great song could be cut from the album.
    The first version released is very spare in production. It features just Bob on piano and Mark Knopfler on guitar, and one of Bob’s greatest vocal performances. The lyrics, although typically cryptic, invoke the history of slavery and racism in the Old South. Later Bootlegs have released alternative takes of the song, but most prefer the original release.

20. Masters of War

    (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, 1963)

    You’ve thrown the worst fear

    that can ever be hurled

    Fear to bring children

    into the world.

    This is another of the first Dylan songs that Howard and I did in 2022, and it has turned out to be our 2nd most viewed video (after Brownsville Girl) with almost 6,000 views on the main channel. Here Bob turns his famous vitriol on the people who profit from war. One of Bob’s earliest songs, written at age 22, the song continues to resonate with current events today and has been called the Greatest Anti-War song ever. The link goes to the main channel so you can read all the nice comments we received on this one!

21. Murder Most Foul
    (Rough & Rowdy Ways, 2020)

    Greatest magic trick under the sun
    Perfectly executed, skillfully done.

    It took me 3 years after this song was released for me to tackle it in a reaction, as I found the song too painful to listen to. It proves that Bob, in addition to being a great student of music and popular song, is also well-read in the facts of the JFK Assassination. I have been studying that event for over 60 years myself, pretty much ever since it happened when I was 12-years-old.
    At 55 minutes it is the longest video action to a song that I have ever done and it delves deep into “Conspiracy Facts.” (The link goes to my Rumble channel, as YouTube put restrictions on my original video because I showed a few seconds of the Zapruder film.)
    Warning: My video is not recommended for those who believe the Lone Gunman cover story.

22. When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky
    (Alternate version from Empire Burlesque, 1985)

    This time, I’m asking for freedom.

    Freedom from a world which you deny.

    You’ll give it to me now,

    or I’ll take it anyhow.

    This is another case where an outtake from an album was actually better than the version that was released. This version of the song was recorded for Empire Burlesque, but for unknown reasons passed over in favor of a much weaker version. It was finally released 5 years later in the first Bootleg series.
    In addition to the rocking rhythm section of Jamaicans Sly Dunbar on Drums and Robbie Shakespeare on Bass, this track also features two musicians borrowed from Bruce Springsteen’s band, Steve Van Zandt on guitar and Roy Bitton on Piano. Bob turns in an amazing vocal performance on this version.

23. When I Paint My Masterpiece
    (Bootleg, 1971)
    Someday everything is gonna sound like a rhapsody

    When I paint my masterpiece.

    This song was written and first recorded by Bob in March of 1971, but a version by The Band was actually the first one to be released in September of 1971 on their Cahoots album. Bob’s version was then released as part of his Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 in November of 1971. This is one of those rare Dylan songs that I prefer the cover version, not only for Garth Hudson’s amazing Accordion part, but also for Levon Helm’s gritty vocal. The link goes to The Band version.

24. Let me Die in my Footsteps
    (Outtake from The Freewheelin’ Dylan, 1963)

    There’s been rumors of war and wars that have been
    The meaning of life has been lost in the wind
    And some people thinking that the end is close by
    ’Stead of learning to live, they’re learning to die!
    

    This is another great song that never made it on an official album, and had to wait almost 30 years before it was finally released on a Bootleg. The song was actually written in 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the threat of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was probably at its high point.
    In a time when many were living in fear and building fallout shelters, Bob was urging people to not go under the ground, but to live free in the beautiful natural world above ground– a message that became even more relevant during the recent pandemic when so many hid in their houses!

25. Talkin’ World War III Blues

    (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, 1963)

    I’ll let you be in my dream

    if I can be in yours

    Bob did many “Talkin’ blues” songs in his early years, a format he borrowed from his idol Woody Guthrie. Bob did at least a half dozen of these humorous songs starting with “Talkin New York,” one of only two original songs on his first album. (The other being “Song to Woody.”) Sadly, this vision of being one of the few survivors after a nuclear war may be the one that still has the most relevance today.

Halftime Break: The hardest part of doing this list is ranking the songs. I felt strongly about which songs were in the Top 10, but progressively less so as I continued down the list. I think I have the Top 25 about right, although I am not as confident that they are all in the right order.

When it comes to the next 25, however, I don’t have very strong feelings about how to rank them. They are all good songs that I love, but there is little difference between them on my obsession scale.

Therefore, for the Second Half, I am going to group them by the albums they were on, (or at least worked on for) in chronological order, starting with the 3 great albums that Bob put out in a 14-month period in his first electric period: “Bringing it all Back Home” (April 1965), “Highway 61 Revisited” (August 1965) and the double album “Blonde on Blonde” (June 1966)

26.

Subterranean Homesick Blues
(Bringing it all back home, 1965)
20 years of school and
then they put you on the day shift.

This is one of the first songs that Howard and I reacted to after starting the channel in 2022. It was also the first Dylan song to make the Top 40 on the American charts, sneaking into #39 after it came out in March of 1965, although I never heard it until later. There is also a good argument to be made that this is one of the first rap songs ever. In the video we used Dylan’s iconic video where he displays cards with the lyrics as he sings. That video was part of the 1967 documentary, “Don’t look back,” about his 1965 tour of England.

27. Maggie’s Farm
    (Bringing it all Back Home, 1965)

    Well I try my best

    to be just like I am

    But everybody wants you

    to be just like them.

Everybody remembers when Bob went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, and many remember him performing his big radio hit from that summer, “Like a Rolling Stone,” but it was actually this song that he performed first that night and shocked the audience with. It was this historic live performance that I reacted to, and even though the video itself was blocked for copyright, you can still hear the amazing sounds of members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band backing him, including a blistering turn on lead guitar by Mike Bloomfield. Welcome to Rock n’ Roll!

28.

If You Gotta Go, Go Now
(Outtake, Bringing it all Back Home, 1965)
It ain’t that I’m wanting
Anything you never gave before
It’s just that I’ll be sleeping soon
and it will be too dark for you to find the door

This is another song that showcases Bob’s great sense of humor. Although he worked on it for the “Bringing it all Back Home” album, none of his versions were ever released in the United States until it came out in the first Bootleg series in 1991. A cover version of the song by Manfred Mann made it to #2 on the British charts in 1965, while the Fairport Convention did a version in French that also charted in England in 1969.

29.

Desolation Row
(Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)

Yes, I received your letter yesterday,
about the time the doorknob broke.
When you asked me how I was doing,
was that some kind of joke?

One of my all-time favorite Dylan songs. What 23-year-old today could write a song that references (in order of appearance): Cinderella, Bette Davis, Romeo, Cain and Abel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Good Samaritan, Ophelia, Einstein, Robin Hood, The Phantom of the Opera, Casanova, Nero, Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot–all in just one song?

30.

Highway 61 Revisited
(Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)
Now the roving gambler
he was very bored.
He wanted to create
a next world war.

The actual US Highway 61 runs 1,400 miles from Bob’s native Minnesota to New Orleans and generally follows the course of the Mississippi River. At its southern end it runs for over 100 miles through the heart of the Mississippi River Delta, the home of the Delta Blues that eventually migrated north and gave birth to the electric blues and Rock n’ Roll.

31.

Tombstone Blues
(Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)
And the National Bank at a profit
sells road maps for the soul
to the old folks home in the college.

Bob has always done a lot of songs that follow the traditional blues musical pattern, although his lyrics have never been conventional. Just like in Desolation Row, here he reels off a series of historical and contemporary cultural references including: Paul Revere’s Horse, The Ghost of Belle Starr, Jezebel, Jack the Ripper, John the Baptist, Gypsy Davey, Galileo, Delilah, Cecil B. DeMille, Ma Rainey and Beethoven!

32. Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues
    (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)
    Don’t put on any airs
    when your down on Rue Morgue Avenue
    They got some hungry women there
    and they’ll really make a mess out you.

In my video I included a long introduction to this song that Dylan attempted to give during the infamous concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London during his 1966 World Tour. The crowd was not happy with Bob’s electric sound and there were many interruptions, boos and catcalls from the audience. The song chronicles the narrator’s misadventures in the border town of Juarez, Mexico after which he sings, “I’m going back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough.”

33. 
    Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again
    (Blonde on Blonde, 1966)
    And here I sit so patiently
    waiting to find out what price,
    you have to pay to get out of
    going through all these things twice.

    Among the many things that people fail to understand about Bob Dylan is his tremendous sense of humor. This rollicking collection of vignettes reveals that in spades. The characters in this song include the Ragman, Shakespeare, Grandpa, the Senator, the Preacher, and the Rain Man, each drawn in the most absurd possible terms.

34. Visions of Joanna
    (Blonde on Blonde, 1966)
    The ghost of electricity
    howls in the bones of her face.

    This song is generally considered to be the masterpiece of the Blonde on Blonde album, a 7-minute lament of not being able to find his beloved Johanna, despite his visions of her having “kept me up past the dawn.” Despite the urban milieu of the lyrics, the production is pure Nashville country with some great guitar licks and one of Dylan’s best harmonica parts.

Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
(Blonde on Blonde, 1966)
Where the sad-eyed prophets
say that no man comes.

As I mentioned above, this 11-minute-plus song is pretty much indecipherable, but somehow addictive. Perhaps it’s Bob’s passionate vocal delivery. In a later song (Sara, on the Desire album,) he claimed that he wrote it for his new wife the former Sara Lownds, who he married a few months before he recorded the song in January of 1966.
Some have pointed out the similarity between the word “lowlands” and her former name. Others see “Sara” as a last-minute attempt to win his wife’s affections back as they were on the verge of divorce.

36.

She’s Your Lover Now
(Outtake from Blonde on Blonde, 1966)
Now you stand here
expecting me to remember
something you forgot to say

This song was left unfinished and never surfaced until a version showed up 25 years later in the first Bootleg series in 1991. Additional versions were released in a 2015 Bootleg that were more complete, although they only had Bob on the piano. In 2025 a fellow named Ant Man Bee spliced the various versions together and enhanced it wit h AI to make a compete song. Although it is obviously not the way that Bob would have finished the song, it does make for an interesting experiment.
I used that video in a reaction that proved to be one of my most controversial videos. The problem was that I suggested that the song may have been written about socialite and Warhol Factory Girl Edie Sedgewick, with whom Bob is rumored to have had a relationship, which Bob strongly denies to the point of threatening lawsuits if you say so. As a result, all the Dylan Facebook groups that normally publish links to my songs refused to post it. For those interested, I wrote up the controversy in my Substack titled, “Touching the 3rd rail of Dylanology.”

37.

I Threw it all Away
(Nashville Skyline, 1969)
One things for certain
you will surely be a hurtin’
if you throw it all away.

Dylan shocked many of his fans when he produced an album of country songs in 1969. I could have picked any number of songs from the album, but I chose the next three on the list that reflect different moods. This song is a sad lament of a man who “must have been mad, never knew what he had, until he threw it all away.”

38. Tonight I’ll be staying here with you
    (Nashville Skyline, 1969)

    Throw my ticket out the window
    Throw my suitcase out there too

    Throw my troubles out the door
    I don’t need them any more
    ’Cause tonight I’ll be staying here with you.

    In contrast to the song above, this one finds the narrator in a joyful mood because, instead of getting on a train to leave town, he is going to spend the night with his lady friend. As he hears the train whistle blow, he says, “If there’s a poor boy on the street, then let him have my seat.”

39. 
    One More Night
    (Nashville Skyline, 1969)

    I was so mistaken when I thought that she’d be true,
    I had no idea what a woman in love would do.

    What would a country album be without a cheating, somebody done somebody wrong song? Dylan supplies it with this lament that “I miss my darlin’ so, I didn’t mean to see her go, but tonight, no light will shine on me.”

    40.

    Time Passes Slowly
    (New Morning, 1970)
    Once I had a sweetheart
    she was fine and good looking
    She sat in the kitchen
    while her mama was cooking.

    The New Morning album finds Bob at the happiest time in his life when he was living in the Catskill Mountains with his wife Sara and their 4 young children all born in the late 1960s. This song captures the feeling of timelessness of that life, but of course it was not to last.

    41.

    The Man in Me
    New Morning, 1970)

    The man in me will hide some time

    to keep from being seen.

    But that’s just because he doesn’t want

    to turn into some machine.

    This is an unabashed love song to his wife Sara. “It takes a woman like you to get through to the man in me.”

42.

Day of the Locusts
(New Morning, 1970)
The man standing next to me,
his head was exploding,
I was praying the pieces
wouldn’t fall on me.

This song would be one of my favorites just for the quoted line if nothing else. The occasion was the presentation of an Honorary Degree to Bob at Princeton University. It may be the last time Bob received an honor in person, as he didn’t even show up for his Nobel Prize in Literature.

43. Joey
    (Desire, 1976)
    Always on the outside,
    of whatever side there was.
    When they asked him why it had to be that way
    he answered, “just because.”

This will certainly be the most controversial song on my list, as I found out recently when I did my video on it. There are a large number of Dylan fans who absolutely hate the song for seemingly glorifying the NYC mobster Joey Gallo. In my video I point out that most of what the narrator says about Joey is provably false, and yet I have always found the song to be mesmerizing. Perhaps it’s the great instrumental work of Scarlet Rivera on violin and Dominic Cortese playing Accordion and Mandolin. Or perhaps it’s the impassioned singing by Bob backed by Emma Lou Harris. The total effect is spellbinding, and after all, it’s not the first time Bob has played fast and loose with the facts of an outlaw’s life. As I pointed out in another video, he did a similar thing with the song, “John Wesley Harding,” who if anything, was even a worse killer than Joey!

44. Clean-cut Kid
    (Empire Burlesque, 1985)

    They said what’s up is down.

    They said what isn’t is

    They put ideas in his head

    that he thought were his.

    This is one of Dylan’s best anti-war songs. Many feel the song is about Vietnam War veterans, however, I see it as having a much broader application. All of modern psychological warfare is about putting ideas in people’s heads that they will think are theirs.

45. Political World
    (Oh Mercy, 1989)

    As soon as you’re awake,

    you’re trained to take

    what looks like the easy way out.

    I am a political guy, so this song is right up my alley. Bob doesn’t take partisan stands like some popular artists, because he sees the bigger picture that all politics is corrupt. In my analysis, I react to an interesting video for this song that was directed by rocker John “Cougar” Mellencamp.

46. Everything’s Broken
    (Alternate Version from Oh Mercy sessions, 1989)
    Broken idols, Broken heroes,
    Broken Numbers, Adding up to zeros

    Showing Bob’s amazing lyrical ability, he did two different versions of this song with almost totally different lyrics, and they are both great! I reacted to the alternate take which didn’t come out until the Tall Tale Signs Bootleg almost 20 years later.

Not Dark Yet
(Time Out of Mind, 1997)
I’ve been down at the bottom
of a world full of lies.
I’m not looking for nothing
in anyone’s eyes.

Although Bob was only 56 when Time out of Mind came out, on many of the songs he affects the voice of a world-weary old man, and never more so than in this bleak meditation on death. Perhaps he was feeling his mortality after being hospitalized in May of 1997 with a serious lung infection. Obviously he recovered and went on to forge a brilliant 2nd Act in his legendary career.

48. Highlands
    (Time out of Mind, 1997)
    Live in Worcester, Mass
    Feel like a prisoner in a world of mystery
    Wish someone would come
    And push back the clock for me.

    I never cared that much for the album version of this song, but when I heard this live version it was like a completely different song! Bob stepped up the tempo to turn the long, droning 16-minute album version into a sprightly 10-minute performance. Along with much of the “Time out of Mind” album, this is another meditation on getting old and nearing the end of life. Of course, almost 30 years later, Bob is still going strong!

49. Floater
    (Love and Theft, 2001)
    I’m in love with my 2nd cousin
    I think I could be happy forever with her.

    This is an odd collection of verses that don’t seem to tell a unified story. The common theme seems to be a celebration of quiet country life in the South. The song is unusual in having the melody stolen from the 1932 song “Snuggled on your shoulder,” and some of the lyrics taken from the 1989 Japanese novel “Confessions of a Jakuza,” by Junichi Saga, but no matter, it’s a fun listen!

50.

It’s All Good
(Together through life, 2009)
Live in Chicago
Brick by brick, they tear you down
A teacup of water is enough to drown

It’s simply amazing that often times Dylan’s live performances are better than the studio version, and this is certainly one of them. The song has only been performed live 3 times, but they knocked it out of the park in this rocking debut in Chicago.

Conclusion

So these are my Top 50 Favorite Dylan songs so far. I could probably list another 50 great songs without exhausting my favorites. I drew these from 18 of Bob’s studio albums, which means about 15 of his albums did not get any songs, including most recently Tempest, the 3 albums from his “Born Again” period, and many of his earliest albums.

Here is the total number of songs from each album that made the list:

By albums with most songs on list:
Highway 61 Revisited 8
Blonde on Blonde 4
Time out of Mind 4
Love and Theft 4
Freewheelin’ Dylan 3
Bringing it all back home 3
Nashville Skyline 3
New Morning 3
Blood on the Tracks 3
Empire Burlesque 3
Oh Mercy 3
Rough & Rowdy Ways 2
Basement Tapes 1
John Wesley Harding 1
Infidels 1
Desire 1
Knocked out Loaded 1
Modern Times 1
Together Through Life 1

And now the fun begins! Which of your favorite did I leave off the list?
Which songs did I include, that you hate? Let me know in the comments!

Since this is an opinion column, I will say plainly that it is criminal what NYS is doing
to innocent children, and I can’t blame the Amish for wanting to flee the state!

Back in December of 2025, I wrote a column celebrating an apparent US Supreme Court victory for the NYS Amish community in their fight against mandatory vaccination in their private schools. Although the court did not take the case, they remanded it back to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, granting an injunction against the enforcement of over $100,000 in fines that the NYS health Department had imposed on the small rural schools.

The Supremes advised the 2nd Circuit to “re-consider” their decision in light of their decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, 606 U. S. 522 (2025). The clear implication of that advice was that the law throwing out religious exemptions should be judged according to “Strict Scrutiny” instead of the more lenient standard of whether the state had a “Rational Basis” for their decision.

Unfortunately, although perhaps not surprisingly, the 2nd Circuit based in Vaccine-Crazed NYC did not take the hint. In a 38-page decision, the same 3-judge panel came to the same conclusions that the Amish claim should be judged by the “Rational Basis” standard and affirmed their earlier decision upholding the District Courts dismissal of the case.

I am not sure how the Circuit Court decides who hears these remands, but it would seem that taking a fresh look at things might involve employing a different set of judges from the ones whose original decision was overturned. It looks like the fix was in!

I am sorry to say that among the unanimous panel was Livingston County native Judge Richard Wesley who I have known for over 40 years. Dick served as the NYS State Assemblyman in this rock-ribbed Republican district from 1982-1986 before diverting to a judicial career. I am not sure how he squares his so-called Conservative principles with coercing Amish children to take medications that are against their religious beliefs.

In reading the decision, they dragged out the old 1905 precedent of Jacobson vs, Massachusetts again. As I wrote during my own litigation against Covid regulations back in 2022, that precedent has been stretched beyond all recognition and is due for a full review in light of modern science that has re-defined the meaning of vaccination.

It is cloying to read the court earnestly intone that they are upholding the law to “protect the children,” when we know from recent history that healthy children have no need to be vaccinated against Covid, and many who did get the shot have suffered great medical harm. The Risk vs Reward ratio is upside down on the Covid shots, and who is a better judge of whether to take those risks than the parents?

Certainly not 2nd Circuit Judges in their Ivy Towers, as they count the number of angels on the head of a pin in trying to justify avoiding the clear instructions of the Supreme Court of the land. Hopefully the Amish will go back to the High Court for another attempt, and this time the court will take the case for a full review and uphold the importance of religious and medical freedom, once and for all!

Despite the promises of solar energy promoters, residents of
Red Rural counties in Blue States are still getting the shaft!

The Darkest Days of the late Pandemic were in mid-2021 when the Feds, my home state of New York and many other mostly-Blue states, were attempting to coerce people into taking the Clot Shot. In New York, a bunch of Executive Orders were put in place by then Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his minions at the NYS Health Department in pursuit of that.

Their strategy seemed to be to put extra burdens on the Unvaxxed, such as requiring them to wear masks to enter businesses and other public places, while allowing the Vaxxed to forgo them. Although there was no scientific basis for these and many other irksome rules, this was apparently done in the hopes that the Unvaxxed would get tired of the inconvenience and submit.

They underestimated us. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, “He who would give up a little bit of freedom for a little bit of convenience, deserves neither.”

Thus it was that July 4, 2021 became my Independence Day. On that day I sat down and spent most of the day drafting my federal lawsuit against the NYS Health Department. My basic argument was that the state’s policies were discriminatory against the Unvaxxed and a violation the 14th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution’s guarantee of Equal Protection.

I had virtually no background in the arcane rules of Federal Procedure or Equal Protection litigation, but I was about to learn. I had gone to law school in the late 1970s mainly because I thought it would be a good background for pursuing politics or any other career. I’ve never regretted doing so, even though my legal career lasted just 5 years.

I graduated from Albany Law School in June of 1980, and was admitted to the Bar in the spring of 1981. Although I had no real interest in practicing law, I hung out a shingle and took whatever cases wandered in, which were few and far between, and certainly did not involve federal litigation.

After formally retiring from the practice in January of 1986, for the next 35 years I had only occasionally used my legal training to help out in some local environmental battles. By consulting with an attorney friend and reading the papers of the many other lawsuits that were being brought at the time around the country, I was able to cobble together what I thought was a reasonable argument.

On August 24, coincidentally the same day that Andrew Cuomo resigned, I drove to the federal court in Rochester and filed my suit. A few weeks later, I received a phone call from an Assistant State Attorney General informing me that the Health Department had quietly withdrawn the regulations that I had sued against.

This was news to me, since there had been virtually no news coverage of that change and everybody was still operating under the rules that had been repealed. I guess they didn’t want to take the pressure off the Unvaxxed, even though they knew their positions were untenable.

The AG’s office had more news for me. It turned out that I was one of two lawsuits that had been filed against those regulations. Unbeknownst to me, a local vineyard owner in my same small county had also filed, but instead of going pro se, he was represented by an experienced Civil Rights attorney backed by Robert Kennedy Jr’s Children’s Health Defense organization. (CHD)

I have no illusions that it was fear of my lawsuit that brought the state to their senses, but perhaps the prospect of litigating agains the CHD might have given them pause. In any case, they gave us both 60 days to amend our complaints if we wanted to keep going.

CHD, perhaps wisely, put out a press release declaring victory and went home. I had no trust that the State was really going to change their stripes, and being suspicious about plans for the “Empire Pass,” a universal Vaccine ID system that was being developed, I switched targets and attacked that.

My suspicions were confirmed, when shortly before Christmas, the state declared a new emergency because of a supposedly more dangerous and more contagious strain of Covid and imposed even more egregious restrictions on the Unvaxxed.

It was then I used my lawsuit as a base to move for a Temporary Injunction against the state’s new regulations. Under the rules of the court, such motions must be given an expedited procedure based on the allegation that irreparable harm will be done if the motion is not granted.

To make a long story short, my injunction was denied and in short order, without ever filing an answer to my underlying complaint, the State moved to dismiss it which the Judge granted. At that point I could have appealed to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in NYC, but based on the liberal reputation of that court and the cost involved in perfecting an appeal, I decided I had better things to do with my time and money.

My result was not much different from dozens of similar cases across the country where courts had basically ruled that we had no standing to complain about our state’s mistreating us. Apparently the word had come down from on high, that these lawsuits were not to be countenanced.

I later learned from a much more experienced attorney that this was all part of a larger strategy on the Supreme Court to set the stage for the repeal of Row v. Wade. Apparently they were banking on using a federalism argument to return power to the individual states to make their own policies on abortion. Part of the trade-off for that, was they were going to look the other way when the states ran roughshod over the civil rights of their citizens.

Although Roe v. Wade was overturned in June of 2022, this new Federalism was cold comfort for those of us stuck in Blue States. While hundreds of thousands did flee NYS during the pandemic, that made the political situation even more untenable for the few Conservatives who remained. We have no realistic hope of dismantling the Super Majority that the Dems enjoy in Albany, and we are paying a steep price.

Governor Kathy Hochul has been blindly pursuing an alternative energy program dreamed up by the idiots in the legislature to convert the state‘s power system as much as possible to solar and wind. Since these facilities are not exactly popular in many rural part of the state, where they gobble up farmland, mar the landscape and kill birds, the state has had to remove all regulation of these projects from local government.

In contrast to the Home Rule principles enshrined in the NYS Constitution, all decisions about wind and solar permits have been delegated to the state Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES), which has been anything but transparent. Their mandate is clear. Get these solar farms and windmills built as fast as possible and damn what the locals think!

Thus what was once productive farm land around the state is quickly being converted to solar farms. The next problem though is, how do you connect all these widespread solar farms and rural windmill facilities into the energy grid? That takes a lot of new infrastructure and guess who pays for that?

You guessed it! Local homeowners and businesses in NY have seen their already high electric rates go up nearly 60% in the last 7 years to an average of 27 cents per Kilowatt-Hour. But that’s just the beginning. In the last year, homeowners have been seeing huge “delivery charges” tacked on to their bills in the hundreds of dollars every month to pay for all the new infrastructure.

The combined effect is making New York electric rates among the highest in the nation and will surely drive more middle class people out of the state. Will the last one out please turn off the lights? Oh, never mind. The power is probably already disconnected for failure to pay the bill!

In sum, while the Trump Restoration has been good for the rights of residents of Red States, those of us who suffer under the tyranny of One Party Rule in the Blue States are still in very deep doo doo!

In recent weeks, however, the Trump Administration has begun to take notice of what is happening here in New York with a stern letter to the Governor going out from Department of Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, and EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, a former NYS Congressman and candidate for NYS Governor, demanding answers.

We shall see if this amounts to anything. One thing is for sure though, don’t expect the federal courts in NYS to stand up for the little guy!

Note: If you want to read more about my ill-fated lawsuit and the arguments I made, 4 of the first 5 columns in this Substack cover the material. The article, “Whatever happened to Strong vs. Zucker is probably a good place to start.

So this happened. About a week ago I got bit by something,
and although I never saw a tick, the rash looks suspicious.
(The pen circle was to track how the size of the rash
was growing from Monday to Wednesday)

I have a bullseye rash on my leg that may or not be a tick bite. Lyme Disease being a serious possibility in my part of the world, I sent a picture of it to my GP.

Actually I am not really sure he is my GP anymore, because as one of the last independent doctors in my area, he recently sold his practice to the University of Rochester system, one of two Conglomerates in our area that have been gobbling up all the individual Doctor’s practices.

I had changed to him 5 years ago to get away from the U of R system that I was in when my then Doctor said that there were no problems with the Covid Vax. I was born at night, but not last night!

I was also glad to get away from having to answer all the invasive questions that the nurses are required to ask you every time you come to the office. When you get to a certain age I guess they have to ask you, “Have you fallen recently?” I fall all the time on the farm when I trip over something, but damn if I am going to admit it!

My favorite was always, “Is somebody abusing you physically, mentally or financially?” My answer was always, “Well, I have a girlfriend,” which usually at least got a chuckle. I find now in the 5 year interval that answer is no longer acceptable. My new nurse the other day cross-examined me on what that meant! “Sorry, that’d all you’re getting from me, copper!”

I also discovered that they have added some new questions about drugs. “Are you currently taking any illegal drugs or using a prescription drug in an off-label way?” My answer was, “No, but if I was, I wouldn’t admit it!”

Then they drilled down on my possible drug use, “Have you ever taken any illegal drugs in the past?” Whoa! Slow down there, Partner! Do you really think I am stupid enough to have that put on my permanent record?

Since I am 75 years old, you can do the math. I was 13 when the Beatles invaded America in 1964. My Dad always blamed the Beatles for bringing pot to America, although actually it was Bob Dylan who first turned them on.

In either case, how many people came of age in the 1960s, graduated high school in 1968 and went to college without a least trying out a little bit of the wacky weed? I know that’s mostly legal now, so perhaps that’s not what they were after.

I can truthfully say that I never did Cocaine, Heroin, Meth, Qualudes or Peyote. If you are knowledgeable about drugs, you will see that is not a complete denial, but that’s the best you're getting from me. Actually what I did say when surprised by that new question was, “I’m not going to talk about my drug use, but whatever it was, was a long time ago,” which is also true.

I’m not like a lot of my senior friends who are still smoking marijuana. I haven’t touched the stuff in over 40 years and have no desire to. In fact, a friend gave me a joint for my 50th birthday in 2000. It sat on my dresser untouched for months until I think one of the kids snagged it!

The reason I stopped had less to do with legality than it did with health concerns. When I was a big-time grain farmer in 1980s, I started to develop allergies which were probably from grain dust, although testing was inconclusive. All I know is that every fall I would develop terrible bronchitis that would have me wheezing for months.

With lungs that were already compromised I figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to be putting more junk in there. When I finally quit farming in 1993, my allergies miraculously disappeared, but why take chances? I never went back.

But seriously, what does all that have to do with a tick bite? I’m OK with answering questions that might have some bearing on my malady, but these kind of fishing expeditions are intrusive, and the sad thing is, I suppose some people feel obligated to answer them truthfully.

Not me. It’s none of your beeswax!

P.S. In the end I was prescribed a 10-day course of Doxycycline antibiotic as a precaution, with a Lyme Disease test in a month or so when the antibodies would show. I doubt I have it, but I know enough about it to know that it is something you don’t want to get. The silver lining for you Dear Readers, is that I am supposed to stay out of the sunlight, because one of the problems with the drug is it makes you much more likely to get a sunburn. I guess I will spending more time writing for the next 10 days at least!

Beautiful Downtown Geneseo, NY celebrates Pride Month, whether we want to or not!

Recently we had a minor kerfuffle in our idyllic little Upstate New York town when a small group of gay activists thought it would be a good idea to paint a rainbow right in the middle of Main Street, no doubt to mark what has become known as Pride Month. They went to the Village Board for permission which, of course, was quickly granted, as I live in a college town and our village board is very woke!

In fact, they are so woke that they recently paid for a sign in our Village Park, “Acknowledging” that the park is on land allegedly stolen from Native Americans. I am not sure that’s what the history books say, but no worries, they will eventually get around to re-writing those.

I have nothing against gay people (or Indians), but these activities cross a line in my mind, between private opinions that everybody is entitled to have, and public endorsement of those opinions, which is problematic. Our First Amendment prohibits the “Establishment of Religion,” and the more bizarre fringes of Wokery are starting to look very much like a religious cult to me.

This is ironic, because it appears the first requirement of being Woke is to be anti-religious, or at least anti-Christian, although I guess Islam is OK. To add to the irony, homosexuality is perhaps least tolerated in the Muslim world where in 6 countries (including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Uganda) it can be officially punished by death, but don’t expect the Woke to be logical.

It’s all about the Feelz, and the catch phrase of the month is “Love is Love.” That phrase, to be old-fashioned about it, can be used to cover a “multitude of sins.” Is it “Love” when pedophiles (of both genders) molest young children of the same sex? I understand that Christians are supposed to condemn the sin and not the sinner, but do we need to celebrate the sin?

How much are we willing to overlook? Drag Queens in Kindergardens? Men in Women’s bathrooms? Trans-Women in women’s sports? I think the public has weighed in pretty definitively on these questions, with recent polls showing that about 80% are agin’ it!

This is not to say that all gay people engage in such behavior, many don’t, and to be fair, their cause is being damaged by the more extreme members of the so-called LGBTQIA+ movement. That coalition nominally includes Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex and Asexual folk, with the + sign standing for all other identities not encompassed in the “short” acronym, whatever they may be!

Most people have no idea what all those terms even mean, but we are supposed to accept that they are all perfectly normal and worthy of public support and even pride. I had to look a few up myself at the online LGBTQIA Resource Center, helpfully provided by the University of California at Davis. (Thanks to California taxpayers!)

Queer appears to have no clear definition, other than a celebration of “Not fitting in societal norms.” That could take in a lot of territory, but the way you know somebody is Queer is that they are allowed to use the term. If straight people say it, they are homophobic. Kind of like the “N word” for black folks!

Asexual is also a muddy concept. As opposed to the implied meaning of someone with no sexual desire, Asexual people can apparently have sex, as long as they don’t enjoy it too much!

The Intersexed are folks that we should all genuinely support. These are the unfortunate few who, due to a genetic mutation, have physical characteristics of both sexes. These cases are extremely rare, but Mother Nature does make mistakes in about .017% of births.

Of course, LGBTQIA activists, always seeking to broaden their coalition, attempt to extend that definition to include people who may look a little off-type even though they don’t have a genetic basis for it. Sounds like Stolen Valor to me!

The real problem child of the LGBTQIA coalition are those darn “Ts!” These are people who think they know better about what they really are, than the way that God made them. Even though born with perfectly good plumbing, they want what the other sex has. Maybe we should have an Envy Month just for them!

Unfortunately, in today’s immoral medical climate, they can usually find a Doctor somewhere who is willing (for the right price) to prescribe the medications and/or perform the surgeries to make their dreams almost come true. Of course they are seeking the impossible. A born man can never really become a biological woman and give birth, and a born woman can never become a biological man and fertilize another woman. This used to be called following the science!

In most cases they cannot even pass for the other sex, although in some rare cases they do. More often, this hopeless quest creates even more psychological problems, that can lead to depression, suicide and even to violence. In the last few years we have seen too many cases of Trans people taking their frustration out by shooting up a church school, or a church itself. There they go hating on Christians again!

It is also suspected that the Assassination of Charlie Kirk was also motivated by anger at his supposedly anti-Tran views. The accused assassin, Tyler Robinson, was apparently in a relationship with a man who was transitioning. Whether Mr. Robinson will be convicted of that crime remains to be seen, but certainly large swaths of the Trans and Woke community celebrated the murder of a Godly man.

All of which is leading to a condition that we might call “Gay Fatigue” in the general public. In reality, Americans are one of the most tolerant people in the World. Most of us really don’t care what people may do in the privacy of their bedrooms, but the history of the gay movement is that they are unwilling to stop there.

Not only should people tolerate their lifestyle, allow gay folks to marry each other with all the legal rights of straight couples, but we are also supposed to celebrate that lifestyle by acquiescing in public support of Pride Month displays on public property. Sorry, but that is a bridge too far for me.

I am not a religious person. Perhaps if I was more of one I would have more tolerance, however, I am a political person, and I can plainly see that these kind of public celebrations are deliberately provocative. It’s not good enough for LGBTQIA to privately celebrate among themselves and their supporters. They seek validation of their proclivities by making it into a political issue, knowing that it will offend a large part of the unwoke.

This earns them points in the Great Grievance Sweepstakes, that public life in America has become. You earn points by showing how many people are prejudiced against you, and whichever group is the most discriminated against supposedly wins, but what do they win?

In my humble opinion the whole push for an ever-more radical LGBTQIA agenda has become counter-productive. I know they abhor traditional Christian morality, but they might consider that Pride has always been identified as one of the 7 Deadly Sins, and certainly nothing to be celebrated. As the Good Book has it, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall!” (Proverbs 16:18, King James version)

“Who old was she? I’ll tell you. She was so old, that when she went to school,
they didn’t have History!”
– Rodney Dangerfield

Rodney played that joke for big laughs, perhaps not realizing how close to the truth it was in another sense. Somewhere along the line, our public school curriculum went from actually teaching the history of our country, to indoctrinating students in the evils of America.

This warped view of history is perhaps best expressed by the 1619 Project that claimed that all of American History was tainted by the introduction of slaves into the country. The Project was released in 2019 to mark the 400th Anniversary of the first slaves being brought to Virginia in 1619.

According to its principle author, NY Times journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones, the American Revolution of 1776 was fought by colonists to preserve their right to own slaves, thus turning our revered Founding Fathers into a bunch of racists, (even though England did not ban the slave trade until 1807 and slavery itself until 1834.)

The Project included the development of an educational curriculum for schools to use in spreading this new view of our history. In fact, this was merely codifying a view that had been gaining traction since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Many seem to feel that was the decade when American History started, and anything that happened before that was just racist white men acting badly.

Since reaching the milestone age of 75 at the end of last year, I have become more aware of how rapidly the world of my youth is vanishing. I suppose this is true of all people who are lucky enough to reach an advanced age, but I can’t escape the feeling that the pace of change is accelerating, and that that is no accident– that our past and our culture are being deliberately destroyed by people like Hannah-Jones and her ilk.

To put things in perspective, the year of my birth, 1950, was closer to the 1880s than it is to today. In fact, if I should live another 15 years, to the overripe age of 90, my birthday will be closer to the start of the Civil War than the 2040s, (unless we have another one before then, which seems about even odds at this point!)

But of course, it is not just in the teaching of history that our culture is vanishing, that is just the heavy artillery being used to soften up the front lines. Once the people lose knowledge of their real history, they will not be able to understand what other things are being taken from them.

Chief of these are the so-called “Inalienable Rights” that Jefferson claimed were give to us by God in the Declaration of Independence, penned 250 years ago.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It is generally understood that these inalienable rights were incorporated into the Bill of Rights which comprise the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution, which protected Freedom of Speech, Religion, the Press, Protest, Bearing Arms, Due Process, Jury Trial and to be Free from Unreasonable Searches without a Warrant, Double Jeopardy, Self-Incrimination and Seizure of your Property without Just Compensation, to name just a few.

Those rights were also designed to be preserved by the Federalist structure of Republican government that was set up in the Constitution itself. The federal government was limited to certain enumerated powers, and all powers not specifically granted to it, were reserved to the states or the people, a point that was reinforced by the 10th Amendment. However, just as you can boil a frog by slowly raising the temperature of the pan, you can strip people of their “inalienable” rights by slowly encroaching on them, while at the same time removing people’s understanding of these foundational principles.

This process is of course greatly aided by bringing in immigrants (both legal and illegal) who do not share those cultural values and claiming that their often shitty culture is entitled to equal respect. These problems are compounded by allowing them to form a critical voting block in certain jurisdictions where they concentrate. (See Somalians in Minnesota!)

It’s true that we are a nation of immigrants going all the way back to the first colonists who landed in Virginia and New England 400 years ago, (and even further back if you include the so-called Native Americans who crossed over from Asia about 15,000 years before.) In the not so distant past, however, those immigrants came here to assimilate into our culture, learn the English language and become productive citizens. Today, not so much!

We can perhaps see this more clearly in other countries, such as England, France and Germany which, after allowing an invasion of 3rd world people, seem to be quickly jettisoning centuries of freedom for an increasingly restrictive society where dissent is criminalized. Every year, thousands of those who dare to question the current narrative are being investigated, fined and in some cases jailed for the crime of thinking for themselves.

Things have gotten so bad in England that even displaying the British Flag can be seen as a hate crime if you do it in the wrong neighborhood, and complaining of immigrant grooming gangs raping young girls is seen as racist. Today the battle for control is being waged online, where England is attempting to impose a new rule that adults must provide their identity to prove they are over 16 before they can use social media.

It is claimed, as always, that this is being done to protect young children from dangerous content, but of course, the real content they fear is that which threatens their political control. We look at what is happening in England with disbelief, but we are probably only one election from seeing the same policies here.

As we celebrate the 250th year of our Independence, let us re-double our efforts to insure that these precious rights remain inalienable!

“Rocket are hard,” Elon Musk famously said. Above is an image of
one of his Starship rockets exploding while being tested in June of 2025.

I have been a skeptic about some of Elon’s wilder ideas such as humans becoming an Intergalactic species, but it is hard to argue that he isn’t creating out-of-this-world wealth right here on earth. According to an analysis by the Hill Co., his Initial Public Offering (IPO) of SpaceX shares which is expected to occur this week at a price of $135 per share and a total market valuation of around $1.7 Trillion, is set to make over 4,000 new millionaires out of current and former employees, and 400 of those will be worth over $100 million!

That’s pretty good for a company that has never actually made a profit! Space X lost $2.6 billion last year on $18.7 billion of revenue, even though its Starlink Internet service made a profit of $4 Billion. In addition, Elon rolled his new xAI company, which contains the social media company X and his Grok AI engine, into SpaceX earlier this year. xAI lost another $6.4 billion last year. (The combined companies showed a loss of $4.6 Billion in the 1st Quarter of 2026.)

But don’t cry for Elon just yet. He still owns a large part of at least one profitable business, his car company Tesla, of which he holds about 13% of the shares and which had a profit of $3.8 billion last year on total revenues of around $85 billion. That profit, however, was off about 46% from the year before, as Tesla sales actually declined for the first time, off 11% in the general trend away from all-electric vehicles.

Nevertheless, Elon’s stake in Tesla is worth about $200 million with his total net worth currently estimated at around $800 billion. As soon as the IPO goes through, however, he will likely be the world’s first trillionaire! It is estimated that Elon will retain about 42% of SpaceX ownership after the IPO, which figures to be about $700 million at the IPO price.

This does not include a huge performance incentives he will get if the company meets very ambitious long-term goals, such as establishing a human colony on Mars with 1 million inhabitants AND bringing the total market value of SpaceX to $7.5 trillion. Nobody ever accused Elon of not thinking big! If he attains all that, he will have earned up to another $760 billion in bonuses!

The way the IPO is structured, Elon will actually retain even greater voting control of the company. That’s because the public will only be able to purchase Class A stock that has one vote per share, while Musk and a few insiders will have Class B shares that get 10 votes per share. Effectively that will give Elon an estimated 80% control of the votes.

Elon is not taking any chances on a bunch of timid stockholders reigning in his ambitious plans. This safeguard, is no doubt based on his experience in the past trying to push innovation through nervous investors. For example, his idea of a re-useable rocket ship was long thought to be impossible until he accomplished it last year. Likewise, financial experts thought his Starlnk service, one of his most profitable ventures, was unlikely to ever be profitable.

To ensure his autonomy to make risky moves, additional restrictions have been placed on the owners of Class A shares, limiting their ability to elect board members and requiring arbitration of any disputes. He also apparently trusts the common man more than the big money players, allocating an unusually large 30% of the new stock to retail investors. With his successful promotion of his ambitious science-fiction like plans, it looks like many will be lining up, but is it a good investment?

Elon hopes to raise around $75 billion from the offering, the largest IPO in history, more than triple the size of the previous largest American offering, the $22 Billion raised by Alibaba in 2014. What will he do with all that money? For starters it will help fund the $25 billion Terafab project he announced in March to build more advanced chips needed for his many ventures than the current leaders in the field are unwilling to commit to. (The ultimate price of that venture has already begun to creep upward to anywhere from $55 to $119 billion according to recent filings!)

Even sticking with the first announced price, that will leave him with about $50 billion left over to shore up his other SpaceX / xAI projects. If he continues to burn money at the rate of $4.6 billion a quarter, however, he will go through that in about 2 1/2 years. Perhaps not so coincidentally, that is about the same timeline that he believes that it will become more cost effective to put solar energy and AI in space.

As for Tesla, they are also part of the grand strategy. As I recounted in my analysis of his grand plans announced in March, Elon is hoping that their Optimus humanoid robots will take up the slack from falling demand for electric vehicles. He boldly predicted that the production of robots would soon surpass the 100 million motor vehicles produced world-wide per year, with an eventual market of between 1 and 10 billion units a year. A lot of those robots will apparently be needed for his ambitious plans to colonize space.

Whether man ever makes it to Mars or farther away, here on earth, some folks are going to be seeing a pretty big payday soon. Of course there will be some restrictions on how quickly they can cash in on their windfall. It is traditional after an IPO to have a “Lock-up period,” to provide stability to the market by preventing everybody running for the exits at once, and companies usually opt for a standard 180-day period.

In this case, however, the new millionaires will only have to wait until after the first quarterly earnings report after the IPO to unload some of their stock. At that point they can sell up to 20% of their shares, and 10% more if the company is doing well, (defined as the stock trading at 30% above the IPO price.)

More shares can be sold over the next two quarters in different stages, after which they can all be sold at the 180-day mark. There are stronger restrictions on Musk himself, and possibility other insiders and large institutional investors, who may have to wait a full year to sell. It’s a little unclear because parts of the disclosure are redacted. I guess if I had a few $100 million coming I could scrape by for a year!

P.S. I receive a lot of criticism every time I raise any questions about Musk’s empire. He has very loyal followers who apparently accept everything he says as Gospel. For the record, I think Elon has done many great things, not the least of which was buying X and turning into a world-wide force for Free Speech. His steadfast support for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, may have played a large role in deciding the outcome. I also happen to believe that he is one of the greatest promoters since P. T. Barnum, and nothing goes straight up without some set-backs, not even his rocket ships. Those who buy SpaceX stock at the IPO should keep that in mind!

In this picture I am carrying the “Sword of Truth.” There is a long story about that,
but you will have to wait for my posthumous Memoir to read it,
unless you know someone in my family who will tell you!

I have known Dom Genova for 32 years, ever since he moved to Avon, NY in 1994 to open a Chrysler/Dodge dealership. At the time, I was publishing a weekly newspaper, “The Lake and Valley Clarion,” and I used to call on him to try to sell advertising.

Dom sold his car empire in 2020 just before the Pandemic hit and has had a 2nd career as a radio show host on WYSL AM 1040 in Avon, as well as pursuing many other ventures.

I edited our 42-minute conversation down to 20 minutes to create, "The Best of Dom and Corrin,” a wide-ranging discussion of the issues of the day!

What is the end result of shitty customer service?
Michael Douglas in the movie “Falling Down” had one answer!

Note: As you can probably already tell, this column will use multiple variations of the “S” word. If that offends you, you should probably stop reading now!

Enshittification is a word coined by Canadian writer Cory Doctorow that was originally meant to describe the process by which online platforms inevitably decline over time, as management attempts to maximize profits by cutting costs. Of course, this is a process that goes far beyond online companies.

Customer service in general has been in decline at most large companies for decades. In most cases you are lucky to even find a phone number and be able to talk to a human, and if you do, you will likely find yourself talking to a 3rd World person who is reading from a script in a heavily-accented English that you can’t understand.

More likely you will reach nobody and be left to deal with a zombie company that seems to be operated by AI bots who continue to act as programmed regardless of how much you try to complain. In this article I am going to name names of some of the zombie companies I have dealt with lately, and than discuss what the net effect of all the shit that consumers are increasingly forced to deal with these days might be.

One case in point is Trip Advisor. As the owner of a B & B, and a user of the Duck, Duck, Go search engine, I noticed recently that searches for B & Bs were returning results exclusively from Trip Advisor.

Although, admittedly Duck, Duck, Go is a minor player in searches compared to Google, I didn’t want to be excluded from searches because I was not listed with them. I looked into it and found I could be listed for $100 a year, which seemed reasonable, so I signed up. Big mistake!

Only after I signed up, did I discover that the company engages in extremely deceptive practices that are actually harmful to businesses like mine. When I search for B & Bs in my town, my listing comes up with a button inviting customers to “Check availability.”

If you enter a date and push the button you will get this message:

We’re sorry, this hotel is not available on Tripadvisor from Sun, Jun 21 - Mon, Jun 22.
Try changing the dates or the number of travelers to find availability.

There is only one problem with this message: Trip Advisor does not actually search my inventory. Even if I have rooms available for the searched dates you get this message. It doesn’t matter if you change the dates and search again, you will only get this message. In fact, Trip Advisor no longer has direct booking capability for any property.

Now if you were a customer, looking for a place to stay on a particular date, what would you conclude? I think most people would think that we must be booked up for that date and move on to another listing.

Of course, Trip Advisor has a solution for this little problem. All you have to do is sign up for an additional fee for a service that will actually check your inventory and book the room. In other words, instead of getting a useful listing for $100, you are getting a harmful listing that will require an additional financial cost to fix, but it gets worse!

My first attempted workaround was to edit the copy of my listing to make it clear to potential customers that I am not bookable through Trip Advisor and they need to contact me directly. Naturally, this copy change was not allowed to be made, as that would circumvent the scam.

My next step was to make a complaint to the Better Business Bureau of Eastern Massachussetts, where nominally Trip Advisor is headquartered, if there are any actual humans still working for the company. After going through a prolonged process they closed my claim on the basis of the company’s promise to cancel my listing and refund a pro-rated portion of my money.

As you might be able to guess, there was just one little problem with that: As of a month later I have seen no refund and my listing is still online misleading customers. Welcome to enshittification!

I have also encountered enshittification in a most unlikely place, my state tax department. Say it ain’t so, Kathy! As a collector of sales tax in the great state of New York, I sometimes get in arrears in forwarding the money to the state. Shit happens!

In the Good Old Days, (about two years ago), if you ran into a little liquidity problem, some vey nice tax agents would show up at your business to inquire what the hold-up was. Usually they were satisfied if you entered into a payment agreement to catch up with monthly deductions from your bank account.

Since many businesses, especially B & B’s in frigid Western New York are seasonal, this worked out pretty well. You didn’t have to pay the annual tax which came due in March, when you had no business, but could pay it in the summer when you did.
(I know you are supposed to put the tax money in escrow so you have it when you need to pay it, but who does that?)

You may think I was being sarcastic when I described the sales tax agents as “nice,” but actually I found them very easy to deal with, perhaps because I was always nice and cooperative with them. Of course I always kept in mind that they had the power to put a padlock on your door if you weren’t!

A couple years ago, however, I receive some disturbing news. The agent I was dealing with told me that his job was being eliminated, and they wanted him to go to work in a call center. He expressed doubt that he would take that offer, and who could blame him? A few weeks later his phone was disconnected.

A year went by, and I was short again, (the story of my life), and I was contacted by the new call center. You guessed it! It was somebody in a 3rd World country whose accent I couldn’t understand. The Great Empire State has now proudly joined the ranks of the enshittified!

I could go on and talk about Facebook, Airbnb, and a host of other companies that I have tried to do business with, but you get the idea. Customers service has gone the way of the buggy whip, so what can we do about it?

Here we need to introduce the concept of moral hazard. These companies (and state agencies) that have given up on customer service are flying blind. They don’t really know the problems their customers are experiencing with their products or services, because they are not listening.

This is a very inefficient way to do business and increases the risk that the customer will eventually say, “Screw it! If you won’t listen to or value me, I feel no compulsion to follow your rules.” In other words, if you treat me like shit, I will treat you like shit!

Just such a scenario was shown in the 1993 classic cult film, “Falling down,” in which the main character, played by Michael Douglas, goes on a violent rampage after a series of customer service disappointments. While this may have been an exaggeration, it uncovered a raw nerve that many people can relate to. Stop treating us like shit, or else!

The “or else,” in most cases, rather than go on a rampage, is to simply cheat the company (or state) out of every nickel you can, and not even feel bad about it. Not that I would ever do such thing myself, of course, but I can hardly blame those who might be tempted!

BTW If you are looking for a nice relaxing place to vacation in the Finger Lakes, please consider our B & B in Geneseo, NY, but DON’T check us out on Trip Advisor, AirBnB, VRBO or any other enshittified place we are listed. Go to our website, where you can book directly and save!

This is the second of my columns that I wrote about Carl Jung. The original of this was published on Jan 4, 2026 and can be found below:
The link to the Podcast of Part I can be found below that. Enjoy!

Carl Jung’s Memoirs, “Memories, Dreams Reflections,”
is probably the book I have read more times than any other!

This is another in a series of Podcasts I am publishing from some of the “Greatest Hits” of my Substack columns. Being rated a “Greatest Hit” is of course purely subjective on my part. It has nothing to do with the number of readers a column may get, how many people click the like button or write nice comments. It is purely what I consider my best columns.

This one, written in October of 2025 is one of my all time favorites, as it synthesizes a lifetime of studying the psychological theories of Carl Jung. For those who prefer to read, here is a link to the original.

William Casey, Director of the CIA 1981-1987

This is another of the “Greatest Hits” from my Substack articles that I have converted to a Podcast. This article first appeared in April of 2026. A link to the text version if you prefer is below:

P.S. In this episode I have a lot to say bout the JFK Assassination. As a 60-year student of that event, the most complete summary of my views can be found in my 55-minute reaction to Bob Dylan’s 2020 song, “Murder most foul.”