Month: August 2006

Ice Breakers

We’ve all been there. Those gatherings where you don’t seem to know anyone well. You’re trying to make small talk and that usually means questions. What do you ask? How do you answer?

1. How do you respond when asked “So, what do you do?”

I say “I’m a business librarian at at quasi-governmental agency.” Anything to work the prefix quasi- into the conversation.

2. What about the classic “Where are you from?”

I used to have a rude reply to this, but now I just say “from Binghamton, NY.” If they’re from NYS or nearby, this means something, but if they’re from south of the Mason-Dixon line or west of the Mississippi River, they hear New York, and invariably think “New York City”, which is about 200 miles away.

3. What other questions are you frequently asked at parties and other gatherings and how do you answer them?

“Is that REALLY your daughter?” “Yes.”
If someone at the party knows I was on JEOPARDY!, that person will almost invariably tell the new person that I was on the show, which leads to:
“Were you REALLY on?” “Yes.”
“What’s Alex Trebek really like?” “He did the rabbit-ears things with his fingers behind my back. I saw him on a monitor.”
“How did you do?” “I won one game, and came in second the second day.”
Considering this happened almost eight years ago, this conversation happens at least a half dozen times a year, and I never initiate it.

4. Are there any questions or topics that make you cringe?

No, but there are topics, usually home improvement, where, once the conversation is launched, someone in the midst of renovation, e.g., will tell a detailed 15-minute blow-by-blow; I’ve faded out by minute four.

5. What is your strategy for breaking the ice?

I have no better way to indicate how much I love the music of Hiatt than to indicate that I’ve seen him live once (and would have seen him again this year), I’ve put together compilation discs of songs written by him and covered by others, and I own a majority of his output. To wit:
1979 Slug line NO
1980 Two bit monsters NO
1982 All of a sudden NO
1983 Riding with the king LP
1985 Warming up to the ice age CD
1987 Bring the family CD
1988 Slow turning CD
1989 Y’all caught? CD
1990 Stolen moments CD
1992 Little Village CD
1993 Slug line/Two bit monsters NO
1993 Perfectly good guitar CD
1994 Hiatt comes alive at Budokan CD
1995 Walk on CD
1996 Living a little, laughing a little CD
1996 Master series best of NO
1997 Little head CD
1998 Greatest hits and more NO
1999 Greatest Hits The A&M Years ’87 – ’94 CD
2000 Crossing Muddy Waters CD
2001 Anthology NO
2001 The tiki bar is open CD
2003 Beneath This Gruff Exterior CD
2004 20th century masters: The millennium collection NO
2005 Master of disaster CD
2005 Chronicles 3 CD box NO
2005 Live from Austin TX NO

About 60% of his output. I’m missing some of his early, unfocused work, and some of the other stuff I don’t have is duplicative.

My favorite John Hiatt songs:
1. Shredding the Documents from Walk On. Faux Beach Boys harmony, name-checks Larry King and Oprah.
2. Have a Little Faith in Me from Bring the Family. And the remixed version on one of his greatest hits album, with more orchestration, is definitely NOT an improvement.
3. Perfectly Good Guitar, title track. Reportedly really ticked off Pete Townsend, who has been known to smash one or two.
4. I Don’t Even Try from Riding with the King. Used to listen to this on the late, great Q-104. I love how the intro line echoes Smoke on the Water.
5. Lift Up Every Stone from Crossing Muddy Waters. I first heard this on an episode of A Prairie Home Companion on a co-worker’s 35th birthday, right after his party in Albany, while driving towards Poughkeepsie, my co-worker’s hometown. The song has a gospel feel.

Music I never want to hear again as long as I live
Celine Dion
Brian Setzer
Mariah Carey
Bob Dylan
Sheryl Crow
BROOOOOOOOOOCE
(Southside Johnny, too, while we’re in Joisey)
Air Supply

Another list:
Joni
Janis Joplin
Liza Minelli can be tough
no Cher in the house (not that there’s ever been any)
and, in deference to your favorite band, absolutely no Klaatu

List #3:
Neil Young
Willie Nelson

My list? Nothing. There were no artists that I couldn’t have taken, at least now and then. There is some atonal John Coltrane I can’t listen to for very long, but none of these folks had any. (For that matter, I don’t think we had any Celine Dion, either).

Whereas, there were people we could play that no one would object to:
Lyle Lovett, the Beatles, and Bonnie Raitt immediately come to mind.

This week, someone at work asked me what the derivation of the term “golden sombrero” in baseball was. I knew what it MEANT, but why that term? It’s hockey’s fault, according to the Wikipedia:
“In baseball, the golden sombrero is a slang term used to describe a player’s dubious feat of striking out four times in a single game… The term derives from “hat trick”, a hockey term for three goals that was applied to baseball as a term for three strikeouts. Since four is bigger than three, the rationale was that a four-strikeout performance should be referred to by a bigger hat, such as a sombrero.” There’s more about this topic here.

One of my racquetball buds was trying, and failing to tell this joke:
A man went into his doctor’s office to have a vasectomy, wearing a tuxedo. The doctor asked, “Why are you wearing a tuxedo to your operation?” The man replied, “I figure if I’m going to BE impotent, I’m gonna LOOK impotent.” (Say it aloud – it makes more sense.)
Anyway, he was failing in his joke telling because he couldn’t remember the word vasectomy. It happens – the word just doesn’t come. He was trying to describe it and said, “You know that thing that you have to kill your sex drive.” And while we got what he meant, another of my racquetball guys quickly noted that, in fact, a vasectomy doesn’t kill the sex drive.

ALBUM: Adieu False Heart, Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy. I was really looking forward to this album, especially after hearing them perform on a Prairie Home Companion in June. I LOVE the Cajun tunes, usually with Ann as lead and Linda as harmony vocals. And the unexpected cover of “Walk Away Renee”, originally done 40 years ago by The Left Banke, really works. The other songs I enjoy as well, and they’re growing on me more with every listen.

BOOK: I got this e-mail from the author asking me to write a “short review of a new Christian ebook called Land of Canaan: Ancient Hope for Future Peace by Paul M. Kingery“. It turns out to be a 649-page PDF about the coming Apocalypse, using not only citations from the Book of Revelation, but Old and New Testament texts as well. First, I did not read it all. Second, I’m not much into this sort of book, with all of what I would consider its proof texting. That said, you may want to skim through it to see his argument that seems to suggest global warming (chapter 13) and the recent (current?) Middle East conflict (chapter 6 and elsewhere). I was also stuck how, in the last days, “Jesus will return to a high mountain refuge in what is now being called Kurdistan, near the banks of the Tigris River.” If you don’t know your world geography, that’s Iraq, folks. After a 30-page index, there are nearly 20 pages of photos in and around Dohuk, Iraq, where, presumably, the Lord will be coming back.

TELEVISION: The Tonys. Do I mean the awards that were given out on June 11? I do. Carol and I FINALLY watched them over two days this week, and even though I remembered some of the winners, it was still fun to see the production numbers. Also, Jersey Boys’ John Lloyd Young, the “Frankie Valli” character, who recently signed a TV contract, and who was ABC News’ Person of the Week back a couple months ago for going from being a Broadway usher a year ago to a Tony winner, gave the sweetest acceptance speech about himself and his father.