–Most people go to rummage sales for clothes or odds and ends; I go almost strictly for books that they may or may not realize are great. That’s where I got Anne Frank’s diary and several other gems. Most of what is there is the same old crap, but sometimes… A couple years ago I found one called “Charlie Chan is Dead”, an “anthology of contemporary Asian American Fiction”, compiled in the ’90s. The young wife who sold it to me said “enjoy”. I have to assume that the feminine-looking handwriting in the margins is hers, and it made me laugh a bit to see, at the end of a story by somebody named Lawrence Chua, that she wrote “Gay Writer”. Not knowing her at all, I would have pegged her as an enlightened person, much more enlightened than I often am, so I had to chuckle when I thought of her writing that in there. Somehow it reminded me of the Family Guy “film”, supposedly from some church I believe, where they describe various ways in which you can tell that ”You’ve got a gay”: if he has a Madonna album, if you cut him and some evil green stuff comes out, etc. As I’ve said before, I don’t really care to think about anyone who I don’t consider attractive having sex (that includes all guys, Lady Gaga, that one older woman at work who talked about orgasms, etc.), but I think our political “leaders” should spend their time, and our money, fixing other things, things that matter, not worrying about gay marriage, abortion, or anything else that’s none of my business and none of theirs.
–Penelope Cruz’s hubby, Javier Bardem, does a great job playing bad guys in movies. Anybody ever notice, though, how much he sounds like Ringo, (or is it John) from the old Beatles ’60s cartoons, in the little preview from “Skyfall”? Daniel Craig says that everyone needs a hobby, and Javier/Ringo, asks “What’s yo-ahs?” I swear, he sounds just like a Beatle. Maybe he’s supposed to be British; I’ll have to watch it sometime.
–Went to a used book sale in a small side room at the local library the other day, where the books are “all you can fit into a bag” for 2 bucks a bag on the last day. I don’t know that I got anything great there, but I do know that I haven’t had that much body contact since the last time I was in a bar on a Friday night.
–Naming the winter storms: Are you aware that they (the Weather Channel) name the winter storms in the U.S. now? Well, they do, and they really screwed up on it. Winter storm Khan was fairly lame, whereas a later one, winter storm Nemo, was a historic motherfucker of a blizzard in the Northeast, dropping up to 3 FEET of snow. Obviously, duh, they should have said “Screw the alphabet” and saved the name “Khan” for the nasty one, so that Boston newspapers could have, over the top of pictures of stranded cars, blared the giant headline: “THE WRATH OF KHAN”. Dumbasses.
–I wish someone would go back and redo some Perry Mason show, have a witness, when asked, “Who was Mr. Jones having an affair with?”, answer “That whore right there”. Then Perry would say, “Your Honor, I request the records show the whore he pointed to was Jane Smith.” The Judge: “So granted.”
I want it to be summer. In honor of that I’m going to attempt to embed 2 versions of Bruce Springsteen’s great song “Racing in the Streets.” Ironically, though you wouldn’t know it here, because the only versions I can find on YT of her doing it show her screechier side (her mentor, the flawed genius Gram Parsons, used to say that she sang “like she was falling off a log”), Emmylou Harris sang it with more spirit than Bruce did, I think. She included it on a live album called “Last Date”, and did great justice to it, I’d say. Anyway, (I wish) “Summer’s here and the time is right, for racin’ in the streets”: (this Emmylou one wasn’t the most high-quality video posted to YouTube in 2009, but if you skip to about 3:26 into it, the song starts)
So many great lines in this song; I think some writer would do well to name their chapters after various lines in this song (or Sympathy for the Devil, of course, can’t go wrong there):
“Now some guys just give up livin’, start dyin’, little by little, piece by piece”
or “Tonight, tonight the highway’s bright, out of our way mister you best keep”
or “But now there’s wrinkles ’round my baby’s eyes, and she cries herself to sleep at night, when I come home the house is dark, she says baby did you make it all right?”
but maybe the best is: ”Tonight my baby and me, we’re gonna ride to the sea, and wash these sins off our hands.” For the Boss fans, a live version:
And when *was* the last time you were in a bar on a Friday night, hmmm?
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