When I Joined the ARMY.

AWOL Some Days I Sits and Thinks and Some ...

When I Joined the ARMY.

Hey. Weren’t we here a year ago?

You know who else is still alive? The nut jobs who think that Covid is a hoax:

And in a case of sweet, sweet karma, these anti-vaxxers (the parents of the kid who shot and killed four of his fellow students at Oxford High school i the suburbs of Detroit on Nov. 30) got schooled:

Yes, Dear readers, I am back from my Los Angeles adventure. The weather was awful; cold and misty and damp. This is what it looked like from my hotel room at 9 AM:

And this is what it looked like (below) at the entrance to SoFi stadium at 4:30 PM on when I got there early to buy merch that was sold out 48 hours after it had gone on sale earlier in the week. Oh well. At least I got to stand in line for an hour before the doors opened.

ARMY amasses inside:

It was very humid for all 4 days I was in LA so my hair decided to have a wild party on my head.

Over 4 concerts, BTS sold a total of 214,000 tickets.

The concerts grossed $33.3 million.

It’s the largest gross for run of shows at a single venue since 2012, when Roger Waters earned $38 million over nine shows at Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It’s the biggest U.S.-based Boxscore in 18 years, and the second-biggest ever in the 30-year-plus history of Billboard Boxscore in North America (and biggest ever in California), behind Bruce Springsteen’s 10-show marathon at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. (38.7 million).

The shows cap a banner year for BTS, following three Billboard Hot 100-topping songs — including a 10-week stretch at No. 1 on the chart with “Butter.”

I went to two shows at SoFi stadium, and each one was exhilarating.

On the last night, for their last song, Chris Martin from Coldplay came out and did their collaboration, My Universe (that’s Chris in the middle, below):

Then the boys took a bow, and they were gone.

These are fan photos of the concerts from Twitter which explain why millions of fans worldwide are OK with BTS singing in Korean:

HOT AF is a universal language, n’est-ce pas?

I also saw BTS for a third night when they opened the iHeart Radio annual Jingle Ball at the LA Forum. I left after their performance because I wasn’t interested in Doja Cat, Kid Laroi, Saweetie, or Ed Sheehan or any of the other 14 acts (the show was over 4 hours long). I would have stayed if Dua Lipa hadn’t contracted laryngitis and cancelled, but alas, she was a no-show, so I took off. I wasn’t alone. There were plenty of other ARMY who were heading out to the Sizzler restaurant across the street from the Forum, which seemed to be the designated pick-up spot for ride shares.

Have you seen the painting by Edward Hopper, Nighthawks? The Sizzler is like that; I felt very sorry for everyone who was spending Friday night dining at the Sizzler on Manchester Blvd in Inglewood, LA, and I felt even sorrier for myself, waiting in the Sizzler on a cold December Friday night in Inglewood, LA, for a very late car and driver. The Forum, in my option, is a dump, and the Sizzler is even dumpier than the Forum and it was such a scuzzy way to wrap up a magical BTS experience. And as such, it was the perfect dose of squalor that I’d been missing. I have a thing for squalor.

On this trip I had chance to observe myself out alone in the world for the first time in two years and I must say, my travel chill is gone. Kaput. Nonexistent. Zero. I was basically an imbecile. It was the kindness of strangers and old friends who rescued me time and time again that made this trip a success and I would love to tell you all about my fuck-ups in detail but time is short and art is long and one of the things that this trip taught me was that I have to get off my blogging ass and write another book. I already have a title. I’m fixing to discuss it with my agent in the next month.

The consequence is that while I will still be here from time to time in 2022, I may be not be as reliable a correspondent as I’ve been, meeting you all here once a week.

So let’s all head into 2022 with a renewed sense of our old selves. Shake things up, shake off 2020 and 2021. We’ve learned to take Covid in stride now, and it’s time to get bak and take off, if you know what I mean.

Here’s a kitty to help you make the transition to a newer, brighter, funner YOU:

My sister Buffy sent me these next photos of a cat who’s famous on TicTok for obvious reasons:

She also sent me this:

The rest is stuff I found myself:

That’s it for this week, Dear Readers. I hope you’re all whooping it up over the demise of another atrocious year, and looking at 2022 with relief and anticipation and gratitude. Let’s all hope for a Trump perp walk in the near future — keep hope alive!

Have a great weekend, everyone.