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Riffing
Just got a piece of spam titled "hypnotize women into bed." Why I deleted it unread I'll never know. I'm sure it was the secret I've been seeking to make my romantic dreams come true. OK, so I haven't been seeking any such secrets and the e-mail was probably another scam designed to hypnotize me into willingness to lose money. The only thing more amazing than the stuff people will try to sell you is the people who will buy it. Never knew one e-mail's subject line could get me going so much, did you? Neither did I. Idle thoughts from idle minds. Etcetera, etcetera and we all fall down. Took myself to the discount movie theater tonight and watched 40 Days and 40 Nights. It's a movie in the same vein as "American Pie II" (and the original too, I would presume, but I didn't see that) but with more romance. No Oscars will go to this one though the female lead was quite lovely (Often the case in movies. Coincidence? Or conspiracy?) despite perhaps the worst hairdo in Hollywood history and, as previously admitted, being a sucker for a love story even one as crudely told as this one gave me my two bucks worth. I stopped calling the place the dollar movie theater since I always go on weekends when it costs twice that. Gotta stay true. Yahoo Radio (The "Adult Alternative Station." I'm old.) is playing a song by Vanessa Carlton that's great. "I need you. And I miss you," she sings. They are words often used in songs but the sentiment is always powerful when the words come from a voice that sounds as sweet as this woman's. Forgive me for rambling, I'm riffing right now. Just writing down thoughts that come to me and hoping that the person stuck reading them will forgive me. Will you? You never mentioned whether my last missive to you was journal worthy. Well? I was reading through old entries of my journal (unpublished ones on my computer) and noticed that my most expansive letters were all written to women. I don't know what that means exactly, though I could speculate but might not right now. It's my riff, I can play it the way I want. You can speculate too if you want and report back to me later. Still, going through the entries (sorted by date so this one might be called 2002-05-05-Riffing) it occurs to me that maybe I could make a book out of them. I could have chapters devoted to each girl I've had correspondence with. Some of them I've probably traded more conversation that people either of us had dated. I'd probably have to change the names to protect the guilty and decide first if what looks amusing or even poignant to me would provoke any response if a stranger read it. Maybe I'll send some to you so you can speculate and report back to me later. Sheila Nichols stinks. She's the one whose song is on Yahoo Radio (the Adult Alternative Station) right now. Just to update you. You read about my trip to Louisville to cover workouts for the Kentucky Derby. I shouldn't say that because I don't know. More precisely, I should say I sent you the story. Whether you read it is for you to tell me not the other way. Sometimes riffs get stuck in your head that you'd rather skip but they're kind of involuntary so we'll have to ride out some tangents before we get back to the point I was pointed toward before I got off, in a manner of speaking. Sheila Nichols still stinks but her song is over now. Good. That wasn't my point. I was going to tell you that I could tell you about ... oh, wait, it's Alanis now. Much better. She's weird but I like her songs anyway. Maybe I like them because of it. "Who knows but the both of us?" Where was I? Louisville. I didn't fall asleep driving either to or from the race, about 80 miles from my home. Friday night I tried to go to bed at a relatively early 1 a.m. so I could get six hours sleep before the early wake up call I set so I could beat enough of the other 145,000 people going to the track that I would not get stuck in their traffic. My upstairs and next door neighbors in our four unit building decided to party. It wasn't that so much as the bounding up and down the metal stairs outside the building that sounded like someone banging a giant sledgehammer on top of my head. There's something wrong with that line. See, a sledgehammer would have at least put me to sleep yet this banging kept me awake. Remind me to polish that part up before I let anyone else read it so I don't look like an idiot. Still with me? You know what I meant, right? Anyway, I don't get my sleep so the trip to Louisville that did almost kill me two years ago when I fell asleep at the wheel -- twice -- driving to the track in the midst of 35 consecutive hours of work will scare me. Thank goodness for rumble strips, the little cuts they put into the side of the road that make a terrible racket when you drive off the road, because they saved me then so that I could even attempt the trip again now. Ooh! Puddle of Mudd. Never knew the band's name but knew I liked the song. A critic looking for an easy target would call the band Muddle of Pudd. "Can you take it all the way! When you shoved it in my face!" Whatever "it" is. I enjoyed the Derby but it is a draining day. The track is so huge that you have to do a lot of walking to get to the different places and it's all tough going because you're always elbow to belly button with thousands of the nearest and dearest people you've never met. You'd love getting dressed up and making a day of it like many of the women do. Much good pedigree seen. And the horses are well bred too. I don't know if you're a hat girl but before you make fun just know that it's part of the scene. When in Rome do as the Arabs do. Or words to that effect. Etcetera, etcetera and we all fall down as Tracy Chapman sings "speeds so fast I felt like I was drunk." John
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