Jonathan Richman, NPR’s Marketplace, Walmart, Eagles

This is not the first post of this nature. Anyway, the show included a riff from Jonathan Richman’s “Lonely Little Thrift Store” after a segment on Walmart’s banking service. Good choice! They’ve used this riff before, and the album is sold on the Public Radio Music Store. Speaking of Walmart, I again saw South Park’s Something Wallmart this Way Comes, fabulous social commentary. Still, I should get around to reading Walmart & the Politics of American Retail. Back to radio, I’ve noticed my growing distaste for songs by The Eagles. I can’t think of another band that makes me change the radio station faster and more decisively.

To appreciate

Briefly: I saw The Magnetic Fields perform on Boulder campus. A good band, not rock-n-roll, and they don’t seem to like performing, but quite talented. The opening act, Darren Hanlon, was quite good. He reminded me of Jonathan Richman, and when I commented on this to the woman next to me, she said he’d held her when she was a baby, and that Jonathan Richman was in her father’s tai chi class. Woah. I asked her to marry me right there on the spot, but she said she was “gay.” How do I find ‘em? Anyway, I asked Hanlon about Richman, and he said he was a fan, and that he’d played his most “Jonathan-like” songs.

Tonight I saw The Life of Brian at the International Film Series. Funny, good commentary on bureaucracy, independent thinking, feminism, and religion. Also on video is the PBS special, They Made America, which I linked to the video section of my website.

And right now on Charlie Rose, Nathan Myhrvold is on the show. He’s CEO & Managing Director, Intellectual Ventures and Former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft Corporation. His new company is focused on invention, which ties to They Made America. He’s so creation oriented, which is great, and pointed out that people should be more scared of terrorism than nanotech. Good point.

Speaking of invention I met a Swarthmore graduate yesterday, Phil Wieser, a law professor at CU. He pointed me the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank I might be interested in. I have some worries about living in DC, though. Still, the idea of fostering invention and advancing politial and ecomomic freedom — false dichotomy, really — does inspire me.

My jeans

Well, I disagree with Jonathan Richman (see link above) on one thing: I like Levi’s jeans, 550 to be exact. But it took me about a year to realize that just because the tag on the Levi’s and Gap jeans have the same waist/inseam dimensions, maybe they actually measure differently! For months I’ve wondered why my Gap Relaxed Fit kept falling down, so I finally measured them and found the waist diameters to be different! Go figure. I’d been stuck on the numbers. How rationalistic of me.

Today I a guy parked next to me in an old Cutlass Cierra with a crazy paint job. Many colors, different shapes. It worked. When he got out of the car I complimented his work, and he told me how he did it: card board cut-out shapes, etc. Hopefully it will hold up through the winter.

Four words

I was just walking around my neighborhood figuring out how to solve a problem in my research. Resolved to write out my conclusions, I crossed 35th Street, arms folded, maybe one arm gesturing to myself, and was approaching the corner. I hear a car coming from behind in my direction, and the conversation in my head went something like this: “I better get to the curb. I mean, if the driver is some nut, he could hit me, and it’s much less likely if I make it to the curb.” So I get to the curb, and the car, a late-model white Toyota Corolla sedan, passes and slows down. I figure they are asking for directions. A young woman in the back seat leans her head out the window and says “Are you all right?” “Yeah … thanks.” The car drives off. I continued home, listened to track four of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers: Back in Your Life as I wrote this.

I was dancing in Larry David’s Bar

Finally, finally, I saw an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with a happy ending: Season 3: The Grand Opening. Things were looking pretty grim for the opening of Larry David’s restaurant, as the chef had Tourette syndrome, he was visible and in ear-shot of the the dining area. But what a reframe! Things ended up well, and oddly enough, the show ended without everyone hating Larry.

See, I was just about to give up on that show. It was a love/hate type of thing. Perhaps I identified with Larry too much. In his best moments, of course. Often the show would end, and I’d feel bad – as if I’d just had an argument with everyone I know, or that I’d have one with the next person I encountered.

On another topic, Walmart has 88 cent music downloads. No Beatles, really. But they do have a bunch of Jonathan Richman. Yet, his song “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar” is listed as “I Was Dancing in the L*****n Bar.” What? What year is this?

T-Rex is a Wimpy Dinosaur

Speaking of the mid-west, I’m enjoying NPR (gasp!) on the weekends. (Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, whom I saw at the Vancouver airport two summers ago.) This American Life had a segment on dinosaurs,, and how the new theories reveal that T-Rex was a wimp, and it was all marketing that fueled the idea of it as a real predator. The segment ended with “I’m a Little Dinosaur”, by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. Woo hoo!

Chess, strategy, and deliberating

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…..later in the evening…
Thanksgiving 2002, the evening I learned how to play chess, from my eight-year-old cousin, Jay. Somehow, I’d never learned to play. Simple rules, really, and so much strategy. I found myself thinking, “Gosh, this is like…a chess game, duh.” The pivotal move was my bishop taking his queen; he swooped in from the other side of the board. Quite dramatic. Still, it took a while to chase down his king, and I could not help but discuss with him the strategies in my mind. He even pointed out that I could trade in my pawn for a rook, and that was checkmate. I guess he was bored after my long deliberations before making moves. OK, I know he was bored, as he kept saying so.

Someday, in chess, or otherwise, it might pay off not to discuss strategies I’m considering, but it’s hard to resist. Sure, in chess, it’s a game, and acting strategically, that is, trying to make othersdo I want them to do without telling them, is part of the game. But in life, I just don’t feel authentic. As usual, Jonathan Richman puts it nicely in his song, To Hide a Little Thought.

Circle I, Circle I…

This morning I went to a farm to pick fruit. Sounds like an odd thing to do, but I bet this is the last summer-like day I’ll see this year, and the leaves are looking great. Picking the raspberries was nice, as they have this elastic-like band holding them to the bud. You can just pull them right off if they’re ripe. I also ate a tomatillo — not bad, even though the owner did not recommend eating them straight. Yesterday in a computer lab where I read the e-mail about going, I logged off, realized that the lab was empty (Fall break), and I started singing “Circle I”, a song by Jonathan Richman about a an organic farm. Just after the first line I realized that I was not alone. The woman at the computer (hiding behind the monitor!) was amused.

The guy at the check-out desk at the student rec-center was knitting. I asked what, and he told me it’ll be a hat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man knitting. At a gym no less. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Anyone see the parallel between Congress (maybe it’s just the House at this point) giving Bush permission to declare war when he wants to, and Star Wars Episode II? Maybe W. will change his views on cloning.

I’ve been wondering that the point of this blog thing is. Others have asked me, too. Clearly, the above proves um, something.

Twilight in Boston

Just got back from a wedding in Boston. In the back of my head I was thinking about moving there someday. Sounds like a place with a lot of intellectuals, and two people’s unsolicited comments confirmed that. My friend who got married said Phoenix has an anti-intellectal atmosphere, and his friend from college commented, passing, that people in the area love to learn. I did not even ask.

But, there’s the taxes and humidty. As I took the tax-funded T (subway, which works well, is air conditioned, but was on time until it really mattered — when I was going to the wedding ceremony), and walked around Cambridge and Boston in search of used book stores (H.L. Mencken‘s In Defense of Women for $1!! + 5 cents for damn taxes…), I kept singing lyrics of Jonathan Richman tunes about Boston (Fly Into Mystery, Twilight in Boston, New England), but “Springtime i New York” kept popping into my head because of the line about it being “sticky.” But it was a record-high weekend for temperature, so maybe that’s unusual.

Oh great box store!

I go into my local supermarket and ask if they carry tennis balls. They guy says “probably not”, but I should check aisle 10. There, they had full size basketballs, footballs, ping-pong balls, Nerf balls, etc. No tennis balls. Another store had min-volleyballs, something I’ve never seen before. Go figure. Who goes to a supermarket to buy a basketball? Sure, those big “bouncy” balls, for kids, but really.

On the way home from softball I’m singing along to Jonathan Richman’s song Corner Store, where he tells how he loves and misses his old, well, corner store. I sing along, and then pull into the Target parking lot to pick up that can of tennis balls.