M. Ted - Ah, you think the rise of Michael Jackson has hurt us, do you? By God, man, you have no idea! Imagine the acute pain we folkies suffer whenever we hear Celine Dionne sing "My Heart Will Go On And On" or Billy Ray Cyrus launch into a lusty rendition of "Achy Breaky Heart". And then there's RAP MUSIC!!! Ouch! Yes, it's a hard, cold world for us folkies, and it gets harder every day. Man, do you know what it's like to meet people who have no knowledge or respect for Dust Bowl ballads? Or people who have never heard of the phrase "Eels and eel broth, Mother..."? Or people who don't know that it's "dark as a dungeon way down in the mine"? It's tough. Really tough. Sometimes I feel just like John Dillinger must have felt the night he was gunned down outside the Biograph. Not a friend left in the world. Alone. Abandoned. Bereft. Outcast. Scorned and humiliated. Cast off like an old shoe. It's like being the protagonist in a Woody Allen Movie. It's like dying by pencil sharpener, an inch at a time. Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. Nobody knows the trouble. And that's why I'm a man of constant sorrow. I have to kill something every 48 hours just to retain my dignity and sanity under these conditions.

;-)