She'll be Comin Around the Mountain...

Actually I will be. Or I did. I performed shows in Virginia and North Carolina, and the Wint'ry snows closed in to make the driving quite memorable, as I tooled my trusty Honda CR-V through those winding mountain roads to scatter entertainment amongst the Holiday party-goers like a demented Jonny Appleseed of Hypnosis and Mind-reading. Wytheville Virginia is nestled amongst the upper elevations and up, up, up I drove, then after the show, down, down down I drove, through some blizzard micro-bursts at 2 AM or so which were quite spectacular and bedazzling.

But the crowning adventure of my Snowy Odyssey was winding my way from Concord, North Carolina to Knoxville Tennessee, to hole up with my son and his SO until the severe weather passes. Newscasters have been predicting this severe weather front which somehow erupted from its prison at the North Pole. Extravagant hyperbole from the news media has been the norm in describing this stormfront. In fact, the normally pensive journalists have waxed downright Biblical in their descriptors of this Apocalyptic Maelstrom from the Northern Clime. The Arctic Door has burst open, we've been told, unleashing this hellish, frigid wall of devastatingly powerful storms onto the country, storms which have ravaged the lives of everyone unfortunate enough to have cowered in the paths of these ravening waves of destruction.

And they're heading your way! No man, woman, child nor beast will be spared a painful freezing death. Witness, ye mortals, the final days. All that we've known and cherished is coming to an end. Freezing rain, sleet, snow, basket-ball sized flaming hail, and winds of gozillion-miles per hour are speeding your way and you're advised to cancel any and all travel plans. Don't even look out of your window! Pan cut to Anderson Cooper, who always finds the crappiest spot in the country for his outpost, in this case a wind-swept snowdrift with a frozen, skeletal hand sticking out as though in supplication to a heedless God, and gale-force winds whooshing into the microphone (from which the sound tech removed the windscreen for added texture). Anderson Cooper lurks at the very bottom of the News media's bag of tricks. When the producers feel the audience's interest is slacking, they pull him out and put him mis en scene in some area of utter catastrophe and you think, "My God--if Anderson Cooper is on the air it must be the end of the damn world!" He's the Weather Channel's answer to Saint John the Divine.

Yes, don't look out your window, because it's an immense exaggeration. Five snowflakes equals a Village-grinding glacier in newspeak. The media whips everyone into a terrified frenzy every time some weather condition percolates. Now, I fully realize there have been some very bad weather incidents. Katrina was a nightmare from which we're still reeling. But EVERY stormfront isn't a nation-wide disaster. Let me give you an eye-witness account of THE STORM. After my show last night I drove across the Gorge, as it's known--the section of Interstate I-40 which crosses the mountains from Asheville NC into Tennessee, around 2 AM, and THE STORM caught me about halfway down. It consisted of some drizzly rain and a few snow flurries-- enough to add an element of unease to that scary drive, especially at night, but not the soul-withering meteorological holocaust we were led to expect.

This is what I experienced. But what were we led to expect? Let's look back a few hours toward good old Concord, North Carolina. A waitress at the event I worked that evening asked to leave early so she could pick up her little boy before THE STORM hit. And even earlier, a frightened ex-trucker advised me to drive to Atlanta and come up to Tennessee to avoid the BAD WEATHER. This insane detour would have added four additional hours or more to my five hour drive. For nothing. For media-generated fear. When I left Concord at the end of this event--around 10 PM-- the temperature was in the low forties and there was a sprinkle of rain. So much for THE STORM the howling newsmedia warned was coming to kill us, eviscerate our dogs, and rape our women.

The storm is coming, yes indeed. The next time I hear the phrase "severe weather warning" I'm going to storm to the local newsroom and kick somebody's ass.