'Neath Neil Sedaka

During a morning walk, a turn of brain had me switch from the audiobook for A Dance with Dragons (why, Roy Dotrice, must you lose track of your character voices from book to book?) to the two songs on my iPod by Neil Sedaka.

I know he's recorded a lot more songs in his long career. I recall an odd love duet with his daughter. What trips me out about "Calendar Girl" and "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" is the forced cherubism. "Though sad inside, I shall for the sake of commerce and Tin Pan Alley heave a superhuman effort into PROJECTING MIRTH THOUGH ITS FORCE MAY REND TIME/SPACE ASUNDER!"

Let's focus on his shout out to "December" in "Calendar Girl". He uses the word "'neath". He could have used "beneath" and it would have still flowed. But no, he formally sat at a table, wrote the word "'neath" on the music sheet and thought "How winningly informal and crafty. I shall keep it."

He gives out a "Whoo!" at the start of the bridge (at 1:26 in the clip below) that is hilarious. "Holy Christmas on a cracker, I got so much groove I don't know what to do but whoop in exultation!"

Drafting this on my phone, its AutoCorrect suggested "Meat" for "Neil", "Defamation" for "Sedaka", "Shop" for "Whoo". Good summary, phone! Somewhere out there my smartphone has a funnier, more concise blog than mine.

The person leaves but the workspace remains

Each day I walk past the cubicle you were in. I think of you every day, but some days, and those days are increasing, I don't think of you each time I walk by.

It's not the first space you were in, but at least the third here. For diplomacy that of course seems stupid now, but merely dopey then, I convinced you to move from the previous spot to this one.

I miss your lamentations about the latest groaner emails. Your laughter at times with sunshine, other time with rue, once in a while with malice. And some times with victory and happiness, or a mix of it all.

We packed your things the first day we were all back. Mournful, needing breaks. Lots of laughter. Lots of wit, even in your workplace residue.

Even after two workplace piques of protest where you hauled a lot of the clutter in your workplace away, your workplace still had a lot of clutter. Not from compulsion of needing every damn thing in a series of things, but what you thought was funny, object designs you admired. Same as your brain. Packed with memories and trivia and delight and revulsion at the aesthetics of things.

We each each nabbed a few things of yours to hold and be reminded, or things that simply made us laugh. Now that space is blah and boring, and someday will be filled with someone else. Better to have known and lost. And the loss is getting easier, but it's still not fair.

Music shopping, opera speakeasy, candy ploy

Largely house-bound day, about 5:30 p.m. I rustled the family up, insisting on a field trip to the record/CD store while they still exist. Music Millenium ("A place where the music and the people still matter"). I was on the hunt for a next opera CD.

I'd taken the kids there before, but it was several years ago and they had no memory of it. They found the candy section right away and started bargaining. "Can we get candy instead of music?" "NO! Go look around."

We went separate directions. Where is the opera section? Over in classical, duh. Down the stairs, then some other stairs. Gotta open a door then down OTHER stairs to get into the classical room, then opera is in a closet of THAT room. Like finding a brightly lit opium den.

Got there, browsed a bit, took some tips from the "Opera 101" book I'm reading. Side track: the author is bugging me. He loves using the phrase "the fact that", once using it in consecutive sentences (*wince*).

I've already got Maria Callas in Norma, the first opera CD I bought (bet Fanny Chicken can suss out why) and have listened to Callas' studio recording of Carmen loads of times, leading to seeing it a few weeks ago. Thanks, T! Madama Butterfly probably the next opera I'll attend, probably in a few weeks. Found a recording of ... Maria Callas performing THAT, nabbed it. Double CD (w00t!) with a bonus CD-ROM of material (wh@t?).

Back in the day (as kids like to say, I'm trying to reach their demographic - how's that coming across? Cool? Kinda molester-y?) I really like the interactive CD-ROMs put out by Peter Gabriel (still think about those), Sting 'All this Time' (Andrew & I joke about that one), and Prince's 'Interactive' (wish there were a smell-o-vision feature). Haven't tried the opera CD-ROM, but it's probably documents, not interactive games like "coax the diva to the stage after she received an underwhelming bouquet from her new paramour".

Also got a Callas opera buffet CD - more than 100 songs over 6 CDs! - that I'll use as a reference when the various operas get a mention in the Opera 101 book. Small doses. Looking at the track lists made me woozy what with all the languages that weren't American.

The Madama Butterfly did not have a price tag on it. Asked a clerk in the middle of the store for a price check. Clerk got nervous. "That's from the opera section."

"Can you look it up here?"

"Yes. But, it's from the other section."

[Non-verbal ??? on my face]

"There may be a special deal or something. They would know."

"I assumed the whole store would be connected to the same system." What is up with this opera ghetto treatment?

Clerk scanned it, $23.99. Thanked him, still baffled. But there are old-school rectangular red or white or orange price stickers on the CDs at Music Millenium, and the clerk wanted to make sure I was getting any sale they might be having that would not be reflected in the computer system. So, sorry for my faces, brother. It was $23.99 in the opera/classical register, too, this time.

Daughter got the new Muppet Movie music CD. Son picked nothing. Spouse got a few CDs including a greatest hits of Pink Martini. A new Decemberists CD sits in our home, so far unopened this last month. Tough for parents to find time to listen to new music, but why am I reluctant to seek out music by local artists? I have this threshold for only listening to artists after they hit the mainstream. Never hire me to be an A/R guy, I'd never go anywhere to seek out prospects.

Also picked up the new Patton Oswalt CD. No idea he had one. Why didn't he tell me?

Snap.

I still look through the big circle of the lens to the back of the camera and wonder.

Pepsi: demi-retro-chic sugar water.

Astonished that the growing disfavor over high fructose corn syrup has led to a sense that regular sugar soda pop is a healthful choice. And companies are marketing to nostalgia for sugar soda pop. Oh, I'll choose sugar over corn syrup. But it's saying: "Hey, remember when we used to sell you a different type of poison?"