This post is fortified with a genuine Somewhat Interesting Passing Thought [TM]. Wait for it...
It's only 102. And like they say, it's a dry heat - sorta like grilling.
Yesterday we escaped the 99 degree heat by driving out to Muir Woods, which is 115 miles away, walked around there a couple hours, then took off to Muir Beach, where we spent about 45 minutes freezing our keisters off. But one can't drive 230 miles round-trip every day it's 100 degrees.
(Handy ancillary travel tip: don't drive through San Francisco from the East these days. They've taken all the roads out for some reason.)
Today we made a pilgrimmage to the mall in Modesto (aka Motown, known to us also as Funkytown and No Me Modesto), of all places. We walked around the mall, like retired folks do, just for the exercise. What the heck. Lauren tried on a blouse. I looked at shoes I'll never buy. I contemplated the mall.
And now... a Somewhat Interesting Passing Thought [TM]:
There's canned music all over: doctor's offices, supermarkets, airports, restaurants, and especially malls, which have numerous types of canned music in different stores. Some have different canned music in different regions of the store. Today we were in one that even had deejayed canned music, complete with smarmy introductions to the songs. And it got me to thinking, what if all the canned music were replaced with live musicians? Just a couple people with instruments, tapping into the store's PA system, playing live. They may not get much attention, but there's so many musicians out there no one hears anyway, they'd get more than they do now. They wouldn't have to be very good, because no one would care much. On the other hand stores might compete to get good musicians in, to attract customers they're aiming for. And most of the stores wouldn't have to pay them anything, either. Nobody should expect to get paid playing at Hot Topic or Rave, for instance.
Imagine, all the places of commerce you hear canned music - imagine all that being live. Or hell, just people singing.
Have you ever been to one of those outdoor malls or "lifestyle centers"? There's one just outside of Toledo, on land that once belonged to the company my dad worked for. It's supposed to be a new-urbanist, mixed-use, live-work-play kind of place, but it turned out to be a shop-shop-shop kind of place with a hackneyed "main street" look and a few apartments thrown in that no self-respecting person would ever be caught dead live in (or something like that).
ReplyDeleteThere's canned music being broadcast in the streets - the same canned music, everywhere.
Creepy.
That should have been "that no self-respecting person would ever be caught dead *living* in."
ReplyDeleteDamn computers. The death of orthography, if you ask me.