Six Thoughts of the Day—June 8, 2009

1. Jesse, Kat, Sherif, and I combining forces is tantamount to a weapon of mass destruction…at least if you want a food coma. Stuffed salmon, black-eyed pea salad, shepherd's and chocolate-pecan pies…didn't even need the wine.
   
2. In other news for foodies, at the Vienna Café on Saturday I got an amazing omelet, potatoes, and cappuccino combo for fifteen dollars, plus red velvet cupcakes and fresh-baked French bread for free! Little quasi-hipster place on Melrose offers deal of the century for breakfast lovers…who would have guessed?
   
3. Frank Zappa's Hot Rats is surprisingly beautiful music…except "Willie the Pimp" with Captain Beefheart, which is just plain fun.
   
4. Speaking of music, which I can speak of a lot, I am going to make sure I keep listening to 100.3 after I leave Los Angeles. They once programmed My Morning Jacket, Elton John, Mott the Hoople, and Mr. Zappa in the same set. On Monday during their "10 at 10," they played "He Can't Love You" by the Pride of Northeast Ohio, the Michael Stanley Band (with Michael Gismondi, Sr. on bass)…first time I EVER heard them outside of Youngstown or Cleveland on the radio.
   

   Then on Sunday, cruising from St. James's to the Skirball Center on a gorgeous 10:30 or so, I was listening to their weekly Peace, Love, and Sunday Mornings program and in back-to-back-to-back succession, they played a pretty good Van Morrison song from 1982 I'd never heard before called "Cleaning Windows," which made me think of my dear Catalina Street family with its name-checking Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, and Jack Kerouac, then Feist's "1, 2, 3, 4," one of the most irrepressibly mood-lifting pop songs imaginable (ambiguous lyrics, but that MELODY! That ARRANGEMENT!), and then Poco's "Heart of the Night," the second single from their most successful album, 1979's Legend.
   

   I first heard "Heart of the Night" in July 2001. After two transatlantic and one trans-American flight in three weeks, my 16 year-old body reacted abysmally to so many changes in time and air that I broke down completely…only instead of being home in Boardman, I was in Scottsdale for our family reunion. My dear, dear mother willingly forewent all of the fun going on to take care of me and get me to doctors as I kept feeling worse and worse: cough, fever, hives, nausea, everything. One night, my dad came back from playing golf to also give a little comfort, and eventually they put me to bed on a cushy mattress with a 70s light-rock station playing. "Heart of the Night" came on. The lyrics were no great shakes, but the melody stayed with me and put me to sleep, and something in it gave me a fuzziness inside, knowing I had such a loving family to take care of me.
   

   I still listen to "Heart of the Night" and get fuzzy to this day.
   

5. Music-lyrics dichotomy II: Can we discuss the case of Taylor Swift, who on her second album is revealing a maddening tendency to combine irresistible melodies…seriously, some of the BEST pop work I've heard in a long time…with inconsistent at best, cringe-worthy at worst lyrics? Are the words for "Love Story" and "You Belong With Me" really the BEST she could come up with? Can't she find her own Bernie Taupin or Tim Rice to craft a mix of the sappy AND the clever worthy of her?
   
6. Made a great discovery today while thinking about my life's odds and ends as my final four-and-a-half weeks as an Angeleno set in. One thing anyone who gets to know me realizes is how much I care about my co-workers at Barnes & Noble. But the other day, I was thinking about how I don't go out drinking with them, I don't go to their birthday parties…I thought, "Do they think I'm a bookish stick in the mud who's not very fun?" I often ponder the same thing myself. Then I remembered my embarrassment on Friday when I again tried to match Kat and company in terms of throwing off witty, sarcastic remarks, and instead found myself feeling remorseful and apologetic.
   

   But today it dawned on me. Randy Paush said in The Last Lecture that it is better to be earnest than hip. I am earnest. I take others seriously and hold them in high regard. It is against my nature to let my inhibitions loose or say anything against others, even in the jest of harmless fun. It's who I am. And I know if people care about me in turn, they'll appreciate who I am.
   

   In his last and second-biggest hit, "Sequel," Harry Chapin asks the old flame he first met in "Taxi" "why she looks so happy now/She said, 'I finally like myself.'" I'm starting to catch that happiness.