Just here for the old music clips? Go here.

The week ends with a quiet empty space in the house; daughter went off to camp. It made the morning a solitary affair; no one to wake, no one to let sleep, no one to not make breakfast for because she’s old enough to get her own, but at least I could ask what she had. Most noticeable: no one came home at the usual time. Now, the last week I picked her up from this summer camp thing, where she had a jewelry class and learned that poking a thread through beads is not for her, and an “Open Studio” class where they painted what they wished.

She painted this in an hour or so; she was happier with the bottom part than the face and the eye was wrong, but they only had an hour, and oils aren't her medium.

 

Anyone care to speculate about the origins of that particular image?

But otherwise you wait for them to come home, because it’s good for there to be someone at the home. In general. For now. In the summer there’s no school, no bus, so there’s no 4:21 screech of the back gate, no back door slamming (DON’T SLAM!) no HALLO, no colloquy about the day. And when she’s at camp there’s no reason to be home at a certain time.

Free! Free as a bird! So after I filed my column I walked around downtown with the new camera and took 50+ pictures of buildings to add to the 435,204 pictures I already have. But now with more megapixels! Kept thinking of this prissy letter I got from someone who visited Minneapolis and felt compelled to tell me how ugly the buildings were and how it was inconceivable I could defend them, and how Minneapolis didn’t have enough old ones, and we were obviously driven by some misguided need to be New York or Boston which we obviously were not. As if somehow I had a hand in designing them.

Anyway, no one to complain about my excellent supper, or bounce in my room with a question or story or the evening visit from Pretzel the Hamster, no one singing the songs she couldn’t get out of her head, or complaining that her order from the online clothing store hadn’t shown up and it was taking FOREVER or asking for a like on Instagram or saying sorry sorry I meant to when I pointed out there were three cans and four glasses on her desk.

If parenthood is your favorite job, something like this feels like administrative leave. But it’s best for all.

You have to let them go.

Hence that art up there at the top of the page. That image grabbed me for some deep mysterious reason - the child, the mysterious parents, the ominous car in the other lane, the conflict between the storm and the clearing skies on the right. It’s supposed to sell tires. It’s supposed to make you think about safety, and the security you’ll feel when you know you have the right tread. Or you see something no one in the picture sees, and not even the artist saw.

But that’s my problem. I’m in a mood. It’s a familiar one. It’ll pass.
But: Friday! Shoot me now. Do you know what I do on Friday night? I work on this blankety-blanked site while I watch an old movie. I have some rye on Friday night. There are some Friday nights where it all works just great, and I see everything I’m going to roll out for the next week, and the banner art is cool and the Bleat looks like I want it to look, and it feels like an accomplishment. And there are some weeks where I wonder what the devil I am doing.

I require and enjoy structure: order and repetition. Order and repetition drive me nuts. You can see the problem.

Enough breast-beating: let’s have some chipper 50s CBS radio library music! Always cheers me up.

 

   

 

Now, the Cues! Do I have to explain? Fine. As I say every week: if you're just joining the Listen project, it includes a selection of music cues gleaned from "The Couple Next Door." Library music the producers dropped in to get them in and out of scenes. It's the background soundtrack for mid-century life. Many more can be found here.

Some of these are familiar - after a while, they're all familiar, but minor differences suggest they're the same idea extended, shortened, and reworked, so they could be used in a variety of circumstances. But every week I find something new. This week was no exception.

 

#138 We begin with something chipper; has a familiar motif; the ending is familiar; ends with “and now, having ended that scene, let us begin another.”

 

 

 

#139 Hurry up! Scurry! NOW END!

 

 

 

# 140 Comic mocking oh-what-wacky-troubles music, except this one’s ten seconds, and meant to put a period on wh

 

 

 

# 141 Heard this before, here and there, but this is the conclusion. I love this little thing. I wish every day felt like this. Pretty sure it was meant to refer to old cars; probably in the title, whatever that was.

 

 

 

# 142 Trouble in the city. Trouble in the orchestra, too; they don’t seem altogether.

 

 

 

# 143 More of the crazy music, except this one falls down into the Chord of Comfort.

 

 

 

# 144 Generic Brought to you by Midol! music

 

 

 

# 145 Producer: Hey, the scene calls for an intoxicated conga line. You got anything?

Music librarian: (tired look.) Of course I do.

 

 

 

# 146 The saga of the never-ending house project, I’m told, wasn’t based on the author’s experience (pity; I’d love to walk into the house knowing it was the inspiration for the epic money-pit story. Why so many light switches? What’s the piano doing in the hall?) but on a compilation of anecdotes she assembled, making it a compilation of everything that could possibly go wrong. While there were no construction delays or rejiggering of the plans this week, there was just a little problem with the title to the land. This made the husband flip out, and the music gets dark, manic and crazy.

The mocking waa-waa gives way to the Cuckoo, meaning someone’s crazy, but then the Strings of Tension make you think someone’s going to be murdered, comically.

 

 

 

# 147 Tip-toe Nightmare, ending with “uh oh.”

 

 

# 148 The craziest of them all: this is just all over the place; you can almost see someone in a strait-jacket pounding his head on a padded wall.

 

 

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A column at startribune.com (scroll down to the columnist section) and other things here and there! Have a grand weekend, and I'll see you around.

Oh, an update in the Ephemeratorium. Enjoy!

 

 
   
 

 
   
 
 
   
 
 
     
 
 
   
     
 
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