What's your favorite way to keep in touch? Phone, snail mail, email, text message, Vox, _____ ?
#1 with a bullet for me is the phone.
#2 is email.
After that, all things are equal, although I don't IM anymore. I may again soon, but I never really got comfortable with IM. The phone I love. And unlike everyone else in the known universe, my land line is about 300% more efficient to get me than my cell phone. I never hear my cell, and I use it almost exclusively for outgoing calls when I'm out of the house and need to connect. Which is code for "I often forget to keep it properly charged."
Dear Guy in my Dining Room:
Please hurry the eff up. Seriously, you told me you worked for five years for a place that did nothing but assemble furniture for people - and this cabinet you're working on is cinchy - I read the directions. It's not even from Ikea, I mean, the instructions are in English, the screws are phillips head , all the parts are there, hell, I laid them out in order for you before you arrived.
Five and a half hours later, you're only 75% done. You arrived here at noon, and having told me it would take around an hour, I skipped lunch, but now it's almost 5:30 and I'm genuinely hungry, and I want you gone, my cabinet in place, and to get a start on my pasta sauce. Oh no, I'm not going to eat the sauce today, your dilly dallying has seen to it I can't get into the kitchen from here and any half decent sauce needs to simmer half a day, but I did chop all those tomatoes so I'll be damed if I'm not at least making the sauce today.
As for what I'll have for my breakfast lunch dinner combo meal, I think we know where that's headed: take out. I'll probably toodle up to for take out to the Athenian, and get the big ass Greek salad I love so much, but it'll be hard to pass over the grilled lamb if you take much longer. I have made it a point to only ask once an hour "Is everything okay?" but aside from drinking half my Diet Coke, you've said everything was cool. It looks like you're being careful and all, and I'm sure it will be worth the wait. I'll forget this inconvenience as soon as tomorrow I'd wager, once I store my stuff and reclaim the floor space it's taking up waiting for you to construct its home. But right this minute, I am overcome with an unpleasant desire to either kick you out before you're done or stick a pencil in your neck. I will do neither, but it keeps crossing my mind like the news zipper on the Time Warner building.
Luckily, I will do neither, but please, hurry up and get out of here. I'm not paying you hourly, so I"m wholly baffled as to your lackadaisical undertaking of this project. Who wants to spend six hours to earn 35 bucks?
What is your favorite cover song?
Question submitted by Ray.I'm enough of a nerd that I can't really point to a single song and say yes, that one is it. There are the covers that are better than the originals - like Real Wild Child by Iggy Pop (which is cover of a 1958 Johnny and the Deejays song) or the Clash's I fought the Law or Metallica's cover the Budgies Bread Fan.
Then the covers you think are the originals - like Santana's Black Magic Woman, which was actually a cover of a two year old Fleetwood Mac song. Same with Dolly Parton's most recent hit Shine which is a Collective Soul song. She did things for the song they couldn't. Or two of my favorites - which are both Springsteen Covers - Greg Kihn doing I Came For You in a real heart ripping style that brings a lot more passion than the original, in the same way the Beat Farmer's version of Reason to Believe highlights the real gruesome nature of the lyrics while managing to be a great dance tune.
Which brings me to the sentimental favorite - Under Pressure by Crooked Fingers with Bachmann vocals - Bachmann who is so my imaginary boyfriend of all time, and you get a song that goes from, in the Bowie/Queen version giving the feeling of genuinely being under pressure - like a deadline, a speed asked for, a perfomance anxiety; while the remake gives you the pressure of a heavy heart, forgiveness at risk and examining the road not taken in way that actually makes me a little misty after over 1000 listens. Pure effing art. The whole album of covers from 2002's "Bring on the Snakes" from whence this song hails is lovely for those who feel like they want more after listening.
Damn, I didn't even get to the fIREHOSE and K. McCarthy covers of Daniel Johnston's Walking the Cow. It's never over.
