I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: REGGIE WATTS-“Panama” (A.V, Undercover, January 22, 2013).

This is from the A.V. Club’s third series of covers called A.V. Undercover.  In this series, the bands select what they are going to cover from a list (which gets shorter after each go).  I’ve been really enjoying Reggie Watts lately.  And I really enjoy this “cover” of Van Halen’s “Panama.”

In the pre-song interview he explains how he knows the guys in the band and that this version is a cover of an earlier demo version of the song.  Who knew the original content was so different

Check it out (and groove on the sweater).  “Oh woah, shipping canals!”

[READ: September 6, 2013] “Insomnia”

Solnit posits a wonderful idea–if only sleep could be hoarded and then accumulated or traded.  She has suffered from sleep deprivation off and on for decades–her mind just can’t turn off–like hamster on a wheel.  And like a hamster on a wheel, she is annoyed that all of the churning is so unproductive.

She talks about the two kinds of insomniacs–those who can’t fall asleep and those who wake up in the middle of the night (that’s me).  She quotes F Scott Fitzgerald who said “in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.”  Because as anyone who has woken up at that time knows, everything is overwhelming, arduous and against you.  “At that hour you could probably contemplate pancake recipes with terror.”

But its the end of the essay that I like best.  She describes how sleeplessness is prized in business “19 People Who Barely Sleep” is a headline in Business Insider and the CEO of Yahoo! works 130 hours a week (trying t put her on par with other hardworking women like Condoleeza Rice and Margaret Thatcher who barely slept–such glorious company!).  Rather than being impressed, Solnit compares them to torture victims–those who have been deprived of sleep for days on end–and how it could explain a lot about the people who run the world [agreed].

She fears that these rulers are eyeing up the landscape of our minds–maybe as something to be harnessed for production or a place to be carpet bombed.  She hopes, as do I, for wilderness protection status for our untapped resting brains..

Despite the brevity of this essay I thought it was really good.