This was my morning drive-time jam today, courtesy of Kiss-FM:
"One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday....The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year -- half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven."
I have a little over four months left. Maybe I can get to 15?
You know that segment on Letterman where they pull the curtains back, show Paul and Dave some sort of object or action, and then they answer the question: "Is this anything?" I ask myself that question from time to time, especially when it comes to music.
.tiff's post reminded me of what's going on at Mezzanine tonight, which includes a screening of Daft Punk's Electroma and a performance by Riot in Belgium (who .tiff recommends). But the subject of this post is another performance on tonight's bill, Dandi Wind, featuring the vocal stylings of Ms. Dandilion Wind Opaine. In my SFist column last week I described her as (pardon the use of the royal "we"):
See what I'm talking about here:a truly unique musician and performing artist. Imagine electro-art-punk delivered by a leotard-clad woman whose moves are equal parts Mick Jagger and Jazzercise. (We'll spare you from our impulse to coin the term Jagger-cise. Or will we?)
It's no secret I'm obsessed with music. I've spent the majority of my career in the music industry (my current job being the single exception), many of my friends are musicians, I've been to hundreds of shows, I own thousands of CDs, a record player, plenty of records, a few iPods, etc., the list goes on.
So here's my sad, sad secret: I haven't had a functioning radio in my car for the past three or four years.
Well, that's not exactly true. My car radio sort of functions. Here's what happened. I'd bought a cheap new Chevy back in Houston right before I moved to San Francisco and made sure it had a factory installed CD player for the long road trip out here. And once I got here, like I would have when I was in Texas, I left a few CDs scattered on the floorboard of the passenger's side one night. My car was parked on the street near the Panhandle (that's part of Golden Gate Park for you non-Californians) and when I got to it the next morning, the window was smashed out and the CDs were gone. So some derelict had caused two hundred dollars' worth of damage to my car just to swipe maybe five CDs that they could sell for what, $25 tops? Welcome to San Francisco.
What I should have done was get the window replaced right then and there. Do not pass go, definitely do not collect $200. But I waited. I taped a trash bag over my window and figured I'd deal with it in a day or two when I was less traumatized. And then one morning I went out to my car, this time parked in Bernal Heights near my apartment, and saw that the trunk was wide open. Odd. Oh, I see: another derelict had ransacked my trunk and glove compartment, sawed through my dashboard and ripped the buttons off my factory installed stereo. He left a knife and a cigarette butt inside the car as souvenirs. At that point I'd learned enough to know that the San Francisco cops weren't going to be bothered by a stolen stereo, so I didn't even bother to report it.
Truth be told, I'd had enough car woes at that point, between being broken into, backed into, burglarized and ticketed, ticketed, ticketed, that I completely gave up on my car. I figured why fix anything if it's just going to get violated again? So I didn't replace my stereo.
Out of sheer boredom, I found out that the guts of the radio it still worked. I could press the little metal rods where the volume and tuner buttons used to be and could listen to the radio just fine. Of course, there was no display left -- just some metal and a few rods and the slot where the CD should go. So I would count out each click and tune into stations I wanted to hear. There was a four-station span between 96.5 and somewhere in the 101's that I would 'shuffle' through -- click-click-click-click-click -- easy listening to slow jams. Each time a new person got into my car they'd see the gaping, buttonless metal expanse and invariably say, "Whoa, what happened to your stereo?" And I was happy to regale them with the woes of being a car owner in the bay area.
I've lived with my buttonless stereo for several years now. I've gotten savvy enough so that I only get maybe two or three parking tickets a year now (down from one or two each month), but you can't be savvy enough to avoid being rear ended by a taxi driver in the 15 mile per hour merge lane at SFO. And don't even ask me about Black Thursday. But I think I've reached a peace with my car in this city. We've avoided any major mishaps for probably a good year or more.
Which is maybe why I decided, finally, to buy a new car stereo. Detachable face of course, and compatible with my Nano. I'm supposed to go pick it up at the install place this evening. Soon I'll be able to tune to any station I want with pre-set buttons. And I can listen to my own music when I hook up my Nano. And if one of my friends hops in my car and wants to play me their new CD, I can finally say "Be my guest".
I don't even know what to do with myself. It's all too much.
