Archives

Monday, June 27, 2011

ALWAYS BRILLIANT... The kind of thing that seems like a good idea. He asks his guests to forward their five favorite songs before they appear on his show. It gives him an opportunity to make fun of the losers (people he doesn't like) before they appear and to praise people he does like. Watching, you tend to judge: They like that? Ooh. Yuck. Sometimes he plays snippets of the "good" songs and derides the bad ones.

Instant character test, eh? Sure. Find out everything important about a person in advance of meeting and talking with them. Until you try it yourself. Can't be done.

That's when you realize what a mental and emotional midget Imus is, if you hadn't figured it out already. He probably does have five favorite songs, although new ones can displace old ones, just like all his views. He just says things, repeats them until you're sick of them, always as if they were the revealed word of, er, Imus. Nobody else has five favorite songs that sum up their entire being.

But I like the idea. With some modifications. It can't be an absolute list. It has to be focused on today, this minute, this moment in your life. It can't be all songs, because that would bring in classical definitions such as the songs of Schubert or Yeats or operatic arias. Strict limits have to be imposed. And it can't be just five songs.

What I propose, with the idea that all of you can participate. Popular music songs that reflect how you feel today, bearing in mind that you might have a completely  different set tomorrow. Ten of them. Ten that sum it all up.

I'll go first. Today I'm thinking about Mrs. CP. I've spent the last week recovering from a very painful cracked rib. Raebert, not meaning to, knocked me over in one of his mad rushes to the out of doors. I fell and hit the arm of a chair he'd chewed to the bare wood. Since then I've had to sit, mostly stationary, on a couch, sleep sitting up, and wincing a lot if I forget and reach for something within reach. Am I thinking about politics or existence or the history of popular music? No. I've been taking 'nsaids' and aspirin. (Don't tell me I shouldn't be taking both. I know.) But I haven't been able to sleep all the night through and I'm averaging about four and a half hours a night. But I've been nursed and waited on and seen to in every possible way by Mrs. CP. And I've also been thinking of these ten songs:


Tomorrow, I'm thinking about thinking about politics again. The list will be different. It will probably begin with Mixed Emotions by the Stones. Unless it's Rough Justice instead.

I'm sure you've detected by now that we have the makings of a little InstaPunk contest. Give us your ten songs. That will give Brizoni time to march his legions another hundreds of thousands of paces against the wall of barbarian prose. In the meantime, we can, you know, share....

P.S. This is what we call a short post, Z. It takes me no time at all (ha ha) and most readers no time at all. But then there are the readers who feel compelled to find all the nonlinks on their own. They're the ones you're writing for. They're the ones you stay up nights writing for.

Home Page

InstaPunk.com

TBB & 9-11

TBB Shop