THE EARWORM

Did you ever hear a song that you hadn’t heard in a long time, and the name of the song eluded you, its such a pity too, because it was always such a damn fine song for being an instrumental, and you can’t think of the name of it and its driving you mad and being an instrumental there is no chorus, there is no lyrical clue there, but the bass sounds like Kool and The Gangs Jungle Boogie, and the horns maybe like some Chuck Mangione would do when he isn’t starring in another Simpsons episode, so you just keep humming this instrumental over and over again, making that mouth music to the point where you are really getting pretty good at it, the bass line, then the sax, now you are a coronet, and totally syncopated, and suddenly you are throwing in a whistle or two when the flute kicks in, and then back to the bass, very stylish, and its still bugs the crap out of you what is the name of this fucking song, and its really too good to be Mangione, and it might be Miles Davis, except Miles Davis never got played on AM radio that you are aware of and this tune was such a hit it got played on AM radio while you cruised the loop smokin’ up a couple J’s so it might be Herbie Hancock because Watermelon Man was pretty good for that and you are humming it over and over and finally decide to crank up a Mangione tune on Youtube.

One bar in to “Feels So Good” you know it aint it, you hope to God is the only thing Mangione has ever done you are vaguely familiar with, you discover something horrible has happened.
That tune you had gotten really good at, especially the bass line?
Completely forgotten.
The only thing worse than a 24 hour earworm is having it go away bofore you get an ID on it.
So I googled up “Great jazz instrumentals of the early 70’s”.
It was number 5 on the list...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfAJLGFWxYo

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN

My ex wife didn’t get along with my daughters second grade teacher. At all.

One day my daughter brought home a project assignment. She was supposed to flip a coin 100 times and record the results and have the parents sign off.

Well, my ex wife refused to sign off, so I signed it and put

“Dear Mrs Wilson (the teacher)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead!

Mr Renfro

She sent a note back to me with my daughter:
Mr Renfro;

Loved your comment!

Mrs Wilson

My ex wife looked at me and scratched her head.

“HUH?” she said.

She never read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

CHAIN

“What he'd do, he'd never go out to the length of the chain. He'd never even get out to where the chain got tight. Even if the mailman pulled up, or a salesman. Out of dignity, this dog pretended like he chose this one area to stay in that just happened to be inside the length of the chain. Nothing outside of that area right there interested him. He just had zero interest. So he never noticed the chain. He didn't hate it. The chain. He just up and made it not relevant. maybe he wasn't pretending--maybe he really up and chose that little circle for his own world. He had a power to him. All of his life on that chain.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

RIP COKIE

Cokie Roberts, on being asked about obstacles for women journalists covering congress:
"Actually, not any. That is something that's interesting about politicians. They are the most modern of men when they need to be. If you are representing a news organization - as in my case, National Public Radio, which is in every single one of their districts - they don't care what you are. I have always joked, you know, if you walked in and you were a three-headed monster and polka-dotted, they would say - and you had 10 million listeners - they would say, oh - you know, after a moment, hi. Have a cup of coffee, or perhaps you need three. But it is - they were perfectly willing to talk to me or to any of my female colleagues because of the organizations we represented. The problems were much more in the news organizations rather than among the sources."

I knew Cokie's voice way before I ever saw her face. Always good natured and informative, sad to see her go.

THE KRACKEN

"Yes, I know I am here at Chipotles Restaurant just about every day. We've become BFF,  all of y'all know me. And yes, I would love to sign up for your rewards program and get a free Chipotle every ten days. But no, I do not want to "just download the app" to my phone. I'd rather be struck by lightning. I'd rather release the Kracken.
Can't we work something else out? 'Cause I ain't doin' it."