Morning Coda/Evening Prelude

Neon Memes • Yesterday, radio station KHITS 96 enlivened my commute from Brentwood to the South Side by broadcasting a dead man, the original werewolf of London, Warren Zevon, whom St. Louisan Dan Durchholz once aptly characterized as "Hunter S. Thompson with a 4/4 beat," performing the last track from his third release, Excitable Boy, even as my ZX2 hove into sight of Eager Road's intersection with Big Bend, north of which the Secret Service had declared a no-drive zone for the vice presidential debate at Wash U, and abruptly the pall of the past few years, of festering bellicosity and fiduciary crisis after crisis, pressed closer than usual and made me wish that, wherever their handlers had sequestered Delaware Sen. Joe Biden and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the P.A. was piping KHITS and that song, "Lawyers, Guns and Money," as Zevon huskily intoned lyrics from what could easily become an anthem for too many Americans today: "I'm the innocent bystander / Somehow I got stuck / Between the rock and the hard place / And I'm down on my luck." ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor