13 April 2002

I have a problem. It's not my fault, I don't think; certainly it has nothing to do with my own musical taste or the musical taste I had in some misspent youth. No. Not my fault. I don't like it, and I never liked it, and yet, I can't get Sir Mix-A-Lot out of my head. Do you know how disconcerting it is to be rattling along on the keyboard, knowing that at any minute your brain may feature a voice proclaiming, "I like big butts and I cannot lie?" Well? Do you?

I've tried the Bob Dylan trick. (I think I mentioned this before. Rachel taught it to me. The way to get any song out of your head is to imagine it sung by Bob Dylan. If it's a Bob Dylan song, substitute William Shatner in instead.) This doesn't work. Now every once in awhile, my brain will pop up with, "I liiiike biiig butts and I caaannot liiiiiiiie." Thank you, Bob, and, oh, thank you, Rachel. So much better this way. I've listened to Ben Folds Five, annoying soul music, whatever I can think of, and some of it gets in my head with Sir Mix-A-Lot. I've been singing "Video" with this in the middle. Fabulous.

I'm going to try some Blues Traveler and hope for the best. Timprov says that he can always get "Gin and Juice" in his head when he needs a change. Popper did a cover of it that Timprov has. Maybe he'll play it for me. I'll try just about anything.

I even tried, God help me, the Ghostbusters theme song. We watched "Ghostbusters 2" last night, because I hadn't seen it (or at least, I don't recall having seen it). Anybody have any guesses as to who my favorite Ghostbuster was and is? Should be obvious. Yep. Egon. And you know what? I loved Egon all over again in "Ghostbusters 2." It was not a masterpiece of American cinema. Nobody claims it is, or should. But it was a fresh slice of childhood, and it had Harold Ramis playing such a great geek that I totally forgive him for doing the story for "Rover Dangerfield." (Sometimes the IMDB is not our friend.) There's a dearth of good geeks in the movies. Hmm. I think if you got Harold Ramis, Jeff Goldblum, and Val Kilmer together, the movie might explode from the sheer geekiness.

I would be so okay with that.

(I'm now disturbed to learn that Tim Curry has played Jerome K. Jerome in a movie of "Three Men in a Boat" that also featured Michael Palin and was written by Tom Stoppard. The IMDB. Strange, strange things.)

They're putting Christa McAuliffe's backup, Barbara Morgan, in space in 2004. Eighteen years later. In the same section of the paper, one of the recent suicide bombers' three-year-old niece is quoted as saying, "I want to join my aunt in paradise." I think I'd be rolling my eyes over the former, if I could stop shuddering over the latter.

Ah well. I read Donna Jo Napoli and Richard Tchen's Spinners last night -- a Rumplestiltskin retelling. I thought the ending left a good bit to be desired. It's not particularly jarring when fairy tales in their old forms have abrupt endings, but when you have a novel that tells the story of more than one character, and all of a sudden, bang, you stop with the fairy tale ending and don't wrap up anything to do with more than one character, it's a bit much. I'd still read another of Napoli's books.

Plans for today are pretty simple. Housecleaning, cooking, writing, maybe another walk. It's supposed to be gorgeous in Hayward today -- well, the weather is, at least. And I get to pick out another book to read or else just do more of The Red and the Black.

And, of course, continue the quest to get Sir Mix-A-Lot out of my head. Sigh.