SpikeI'm listening to Spike for the first time in a long time, like probably a few years. I don't like to think why it's been so long, or why almost as long for Imperial Bedroom, my two favorite Elvis Costello albums, but at least I am correcting this oversight, inspired by a little situation this weekend. This is (somewhat) what I wrote to RJH about it.
Do you remember Paul Simon's album Graceland and the song "You Can Call Me Al"? Of course you do; everyone does. Hum it to yourself through this next bit; it'll make more sense.
Do you remember driving me somewhere sometime, I think just to my car or maybe somewhere else, and you had Elvis Costello's Spike on in the car and you asked me something about something, like one of my many depressive stupidities. "Pads Paws & Claws" was just ending, and you asked your question, and I said, "It's not open to discussion any more" and you said "What!" and then "Baby Plays Around" began with its first line, "It's not open to discussion anymore" and you (and I) chortled, you in (may I say) admiration and I in glee? Do you remember that at all?
I do, probably because I'm so in love with myself. Ha!
Are you still humming "You Can Call Me Al?"
Sunday HAO and I took our regular weekly long walk, five miles (round trip) along the Highline Canal through a nature preserve. Among the other things we discussed were the plans of a friend of ours to go to Italy with no reason more than his girlfriend of short duration, an Italian major, to go and plenty of reason to stay.
Are you following this? Are you still humming "You Can Call Me Al?"
HAO wondered "What is he thinking? He doesn't speak the language--"
"--holds no currency," I agreed, in the same commentary tone, but with the right cadence to remind her of something. She was laughing too hard to continue, "He is a foreign man, he is surrounded by the sound..."
She thinks I'm funny, anyway. We stood there holding our tummies and sides and laughing and apparently sharing the mirth with at least one jogger who passed us in our hilarity.
Later I learned that our friend plans to fulfill his language requirement and to study with Umberto Eco at the University of Bologna. Oh. I was properly chagrined.
Today I succumbed to the allure of the on-line texts of Jane Austen to find the name of Mrs. Fraser's step-daughter. She was another of those characters whom I could not even place in a novel. I have not used it to search for "sea" in Emma, but one of the questions is "In which month did Emma first see the sea" and either I am a much poorer reader--nay, copy-editor--than I consider myself (about others' work; I readily admit how poor I am with my own) or the Jane Austen Quiz and Puzzle Book is mistaken. Emma she says upon her sister's first visit that she has never seen the sea and then continues not to leave Highbury throughout Emma but for a day trip to Donwell Abbey and another to Box Hill. Austen doesn't mention a(n?) honeymoon at the end; so how has Emma ever seen the sea? I am sure it is not glimpsed from atop Box Hill.
OMFB, bow to my superior mastery of Jane Austen. I just searched. There is no mention of the sea beyond the Knightleys' sea-bathing and Jane falling in at Weymouth. I have to ask on one of the Jane Austen discussion groups if anyone knows. I figure if I tempt the members with the mention of the book, that'll win them over enough to tell me where the mention is.
RDC just came in with the mail, which included a large box from BJWL (and BDL of course!). I opened it. In my current resolution to give the woman a break, I should mention that although she continues to use grocery bags as wrapping paper, she has evolved from masking tape to packing tape. On the top of the contents was an envelope containing another of her usual misprinted cards. What I mean, cruelly, is that the front features a photograph you would expect to see in a sympathy card, but the inside is misprinted not with condolences but with birthday or other holiday greetings. Better than the silly photograph was the greeting, and I quote:
Which implies, of course, a parent's son and daughter-in-law. She cracks me up. She did, however, write on the inside that BDL did the Valentine's Day shopping. In which case I could forgive him making a--sexism alert--boy mistake but still would expect her to refer, kiddingly, to the greeting. It would make sense if she preferred RDC to me but she doesn't.
On to the contents. Something wrapped in tissue paper for each of us--paper from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, which must be available in New England now. More sexism, but BDL's behaviors are so typecast by his gender I don't feel like I'm insulting but simply describing him. RDC's package contained a bag--the sort that hangs off a cardboard tab hanger--of caramel popcorn. This is such a guy food (I assert positively, based upon my father's love of peanut brittle). RDC agreed that it was a guy food, and declared that because it is both sweet and present, he will probably eat it, although like most non-guys, he'd prefer chocolate. My package contained a small, jointed teddy bear, on whose tummy rested (because cello-taped there) a foil-wrapped heart shape. Either BJWL or BDL did this to the bear; the cello-tape belt is nothing even a self-deprecating popcorn-on-a-hook store would do. I untaped him, scalping (forgive the mixed metaphor) his belly in the process, and unwrapped the heart. Chocolate! Chocolate, though BJWL, is nothing to sneeze at. I nibbled an edge experimentally. Marshmallow.
OMFB, if I could believe that BJWL was alluding to the breathing stuffed animals, I would be so pleased (if also offended that she presumed to do so). But no. She said that BDL did the shopping, and he cannot be expected to know that I don't like marshmallow. This time, it didn't even taste like victory, or even like napalm in the morning.
Another waste of expended funds and effort. Big ol' lie of a thank-you in the works.
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Last modified 18 February 1998
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