On the way home tonight, I heard a DJ on KCRW refer to a new film that’s out as “a story replete with sex and cultural theory.”

And after I stopped laughing, the first thing I thought was “sounds like grad school.”

The second thing was “except with sex.”

Worth checking out if you haven’t yet. Not un-Strokes-like.

I cannot explain it.

Not only that, I cannot imagine a reasonable explanation.

But for the last twenty-four hours, I have been plagued by an endless loop of Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy.”

Ordinarily, I can trace such an earworm to a recent retail experience, or to a television commercial, or to the too-loud stereo of a passing car.  But I simply cannot conceive of a scenario in which I would have heard any piece of this song yesterday.

I have, at times, had earworms triggered by odd phrases that somehow mirror phrases in lyrics, that then result in the automatic replay of the song.  In fact, I had an example of this that plagued me just last week, which I’m now afraid to think hard enough about even to remember its circumstances, lest I dredge it back up again.

As it is, I’ve got one surefire cure for the earworm—one mental chorus of “Lonesome Loser” always does the trick for me—but I haven’t deployed it yet, because I’m still hoping to trace this one back to its Patient Zero.

So, help me:  is there any reason—an odd commercial, a movie soundtrack, an unforeseen return to the adult-contemporary playlists—that you can imagine my encountering this song?

Just snagged this yesterday off eMusic. Turns out they played in Pomona last night. Of course, I’m in San Diego this weekend, so that does me no good. And they’re here in SD tonight, but I’m booked. It’s a shame: the album’s worth a listen, and I’d like to hear more.

I’ve only gotten a chance to listen to this a couple of times, but I adore it already.

George has had a no-good, very bad idea, in which I absolutely do not want to participate.  Don’t read his entry.

Oh, and don’t look here, either.

Earlier that day, over lunch:

Me (hearing “Born in the U.S.A.” over the restaurant P.A. system):  How on earth did those Republican knuckleheads hear this song and decide it was a patriotic anthem?

He:  It makes total sense.  Their whole rhetorical m.o. involves not fully understanding what they’re quoting, and then completely revising what the original means when they’re found out.

Okay, fine.  It’s the same kind of revisions that are worked by television advertising all the time, when a song like this is used to plug a product like this.  (The revised meaning of which seems to become—what?—I haven’t had sex in years, so I’m buying a really big car?)

But the impulse toward this kind of lyrical revisionism just became too much that night, on our dinner cruise—and yes, yes, the ironies, given the reading I’m doing this week—after a pleasant half-hour standing at the rail, watching Waikiki drift by.  As we walked back into the dining room to pay the lovely young man who’d kept us supplied with Mai Tais for the evening, I suddenly felt uneasy, unsettled, nervous, wrong.  Took a moment to take stock:  no, I have everything I came with; no, I’m not feeling ill; no, there doesn’t appear to be disaster looming just ahead.

It required a few moments to sink in.  Literally.  First, I noticed the really bad rendition being done by the man at the synthesizer and the woman at the mike.  Then, I recognized that this was a bad rendition of a song that I hated in the first place.  It’s that whatsername song, gee, you know, the Canadian chick who’s always—yeah, Celine, right.  From that movie, you know…

Titanic.

I ask you—seriously, tell me if it’s just me—but is this an appropriate song to be playing on board?

Okay, sure, it’s about a love that survives even death, even an icy cold watery death—but see, there’s that whole death part, and the water, and gee, look, we’re on a boat!  In the water!

It’s not revisionism.  It’s just flat not paying attention.