Road Trip! Rekindling My Affair With My iPod and Recycling Blog Posts Like a Boss

We like to keep things green around here, and that means the three R's -- reduce, reuse, recycle.  I wrote this post a couple of summers ago and I'm proud to dust it off and present it anew.   (This is how I got through school, in fact.  I took essentially the same paper every year and rewrote it with a different focus, changed up the sources, and turned it in for a different class.  Boom.  Honors.)

So here we go:

Summer is the time for travel and this summer, I actually got to travel.  Seven hours round-trip to take my son to his friend's for the week so that he could play video games at their house instead of making me look like the shitty parent that I am by playing them unsupervised at my house.  Anyway.  I resurrected my iPod to go on a road trip.  I don't know where I had lost it (that's why it was lost, duh) but somehow I found it and I plugged it into my car's sound system and off we went.  I put the iPod on Shuffle and five days' worth of music lined up at my fingertips.  What on earth was on this thing?  I mentally rubbed my hands together.

I was alone in the car, which was a good thing because there was no one there to hear me say things like, "Oh my god I love this song!"  And then answer myself, "Of course you do, Klonnie, it's your own goddamned iPod."  In a different voice.  That was creepy, even for me.  Danny's not here, Mrs. Torrance.  Redrum!

Here are some songs that I heard and the random thoughts that ran through my head when I heard them: 

1.  No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Beastie Boys.   Cranked up so high that the music resonated in my chest.  So loud that I didn't really hear it, you know?  I just sat back, feeling it thump the floorboards and pulse from the speakers in the doors.  No!! Sleep!! Till Brooklyyyyyn!  Duhn dahhhhhhn duhn.  No!!  Sleep!!  Till Brooklyyyyyn!  Nuhr Nuhhhhr Nuhr.   Good thing I was alone in the car.  My kids would have turned that shit off in a heartbeat.  How's that for irony?

2.  Lazy Eye, Silversun Pickups.  Cup of coffee in my hand + that hypnotic track on a loop +  me behind the wheel.  I've been waiting for this moment all my life.  There are two kinds of people in the world:  Those who thought the lead singer was a woman until they found out he wasn't, and those who are lying when they say they could tell right away that it was a dude.

3.  Work Me,  The Black Keys.  The Black Keys cover Junior Kimbrough.   Baby, work me, till I want no more.  I'm melting, sliding down under the steering wheel because I'm weak with lust.  Squirming in my seat, I can't lie.  "Chulahoma" is the sexiest album I have ever heard.  Barry White?  Al Green?  Forget about it.  These two white boys from Akron, Ohio, ladies and gentlemen.  Give it up.

4.  Dancing Nancy, Dave Matthews Band.  I have a live version of this song from Red Rocks in Colorado.  The spring that my mom died I would get in my car and play this album and just drive for hours and cry.  That was the year I discovered Starbucks and I would get the caramel macchiato and just suck that puppy down while I drove.  Something about that warm sweet milky coffee soothed me.  I was worried that people would see me crying at stoplights so I had to drive on the freeway.  Crying while driving 75 mph is probably right up there with texting while driving on the danger-o-meter, but but God watches over fools and mourners.  Could I have been anyone other than me?

5.  Beautiful World, Colin Hay.  Remember Men At Work?  Mildly entertaining 80s band from Australia?  This guy is the lead singer.  And a brilliant songwriter.  Acoustic version of "Overkill?"  Raise your hand if you first heard that on Scrubs.  Beautiful World is a song about getting older and looking at your life.  It's uplifting.  But the middle of the song picks you up and dumps you on the ground, emotional-reaction-wise.  Still this emptiness persists.  Perhaps this is as good as it gets. Suddenly I am sobbing.  Gut-punched.  I've heard this song 200 times and I still never see it coming.   Thanks, Colin. Jerk.

I pulled in the driveway and turned off the ignition.  I had to pee, but I needed a moment to pull myself together.  I was spent, wrung dry.  I took such a deep breath that my bangs blew back a little on the exhale.  Batshit crazy emotional chameleons like me should not be allowed to have iPod shuffles.  We do enough shuffling as it is.