I'll merely briefly mention the wonders of the non-fleeing water-wading serene great blue herons at McKinney Town Lake Park in a nearly empty park in the freezing cold yesterday, and the fact that my finally-ripe project to hike the entire Trinity Trail was mud-thwarted because the trail was closed due to standing water.
I'll also omit the Casino Night spouse's work holiday party anecdotes, other than to say that I sure can lose paper money on slots and roulette, that I wish I had made more of an effort to chat with the folks among my wife's co-workers that I like but don't know very well rather than just hang out with my wife and also my friend Scott, and that my life is nearly complete when I have access to s'mores cooked on the flame outside by little college-age catering guys ("do you want yours toasted or burned?"). It was a pleasant party, well done by the woman who owns the consulting company for which my wife does her technical writing gigs. Why did my lucky number, 27, come up on the roulette wheel when I had only 1/4 of a chip bet on it, and not when I had a number bet, 2 1/4th chip bets, and 3 1/2 chip bets on it? I guess it's all in the timing, this gambling. Maybe somehow this explains in life why I have 8 chips instead of 100 chips.
At least I will never have to resign from a mutual fund board of directors.
The "soundtrack" to last night's party was one of those "hits of the 80s" streaming music stations one gets through one's digital cable subscription. We get old-fashioned cable, so it was a novelty, although I was there for the eighties, and the things the station played were by and large the things about which I turned the radio off and put on an LP.
But it did lead Scott and I into discussions about some of life's great paradoxes. You see, it's my theory that large label recording artists in the pop and rock genres face existential dilemmae which all people face. In particular, I renew here my theory that one can learn much about comparative human nature among folks through their mainstream musical predilections.
For example, one of the central puzzles of life, giving rise to great fear that the universe is less ordered than it should be, is the fact that the Raspberries had more hit records than Marshall Crenshaw. Now I like both acts, having a hidden sweet tooth within my pop palette. But how could the scales of justice tip in the Raspberries favor? Then, of course, there's always the "late-era Joni Mitchell--overdue comeuppance or merely misunderstood?".
This wordy introduction now segues into a low-tech poll. I've written before that rather than the sanguinely testing for the four humours or expending years of psychoanalysis on someone, one can find out much about people by how they rank the Beatles, Kinks, Stones and Who.
But I realized last night that there are so many more analytical conclusions which can be drawn from mainstream rock/pop music comparisons. So, for those who don't mind laying open their very soul to me, I ask the following ten questions. The format is "which resonates for you most". If you're like me, you may like or dislike both choices. But this is not a poll about how cool or indie you are. this is about poll about which one intuitively is more "you". No it's not fair, really, but I'm not running a people's hepcat court here, I'm trying to look inside your souls. So help me, if you dare, by answering the following:
1. Bonnie Raitt or the Residents?
2. "Cinnamon Girl", or "Cortez the Killer"?
3. Joy Division or New Order?
4. Alanis Morisette or Natalie Merchant?
5. "White Christmas" or "Silent Night"?
6. "Hound Dog" or "Suspicious Minds"?
7. "Let's Get it On" or "It's Raining Men"
8. Human League or Men Without Hats?
9. Whitney Houston or Celine Dion?
10. Pink or Siouxsie Sioux?
Yes, my friends, with the answers to these 10 questions you will have said it all about yourselves, and I will be able to wave my hands and understand your inward soul as if I were playing the theremins of your lives. It's an awful burden, knowing this much, but I'm fond of you, and wish to learn.
So join in, if you dare, and lay your inner self open to the public.
← Ctrl ← Alt
Ctrl → Alt →
← Ctrl ← Alt
Ctrl → Alt →