I almost forgot it was Tuesday, what with everything going on this week. At Spectre Collie HQ, I’ve been preoccupied with furniture and with VR headsets and, like everybody else in Los Angeles:
Rain, and lots of it. Revolver is my favorite Beatles album, and it’s only a modern convention that “Rain” is included on it, since we don’t really do singles in the 21st century. It fits, though. I honestly can’t say whether I like the song for its own merits, or just because I know that one of my best friends was named after it.
When you live in a desert, unusual amounts of rain mean one thing:
Twisting. No, wait: Floods. We’ve been relatively fortunate that for us, the storm’s been little more than a nuisance. I’ve been staying off the roads, though, since the last time a big rain storm hit, it was causing flooding all over the San Fernando Valley. It’s kind of surreal to be driving through (beautiful downtown) Burbank like everything’s normal, and suddenly finding yourself driving through foot-deep ponds in the middle of an intersection. That was enough to convince me to stay at home if possible.
It’s also surreal to see the LA River actually filled with water. I’d always assumed that calling it the “LA River,” was Los Angeles being sardonic or something, since it’s just an impossibly huge concrete canal going through the city and occasionally being used for film or music video shoots. Ignorant of LA history, I wasn’t aware that it’s an actual river, paved only because of catastrophic floods in the 1930s.
Anyway: Flood isn’t my favorite They Might Be Giants album (that’s Lincoln), and “Twisting” isn’t my favorite song from Flood (that’s “Minimum Wage”). But it’s been a while since I’ve heard it, and it’s a highlight, even if I don’t know anybody named after it.