The Wily Filipino

2046 / Broken Flowers.

Or, a lesser film by one of my favorite directors, shot by one of my favorite cinematographers, featuring a disaffected emotional cipher of a Don Juan who is unable to truly connect with people around him and is on a quest for something he is not entirely sure about, with laconic dialogue, strict attention to interior detail, and a series of stunning women who drift in and out of his life, all more interestingly wrought than the lead character.

Tuesday.

Been cramming in the extracurricular activities -- okay, and getting work done too -- before classes begin on Thursday. After all-day meetings on Monday -- okay, followed by a big potluck dinner at the chair's house, then Jim Jarmusch's so-so Broken Flowers with my friend the Tokinawan (god I hope he doesn't read this) -- Tuesday was practically playing hooky.

Took Izzy to the PollyEggettes Experience, and she loved it. (Thanks to J-Lu, I would have never known the stores were so close to where I lived.) Pollyann's is this amazing ice cream shop in the Outer Sunset to which I haven't been to in years. It has since been renovated, and has lost a bit of its cramped, quirky charm, but the corny signs and the roulette wheel are still there, and so are the rotating 50 flavors. Izzy knew what she wanted: "just strawberry." I had Batman -- black vanilla (!) with lemon stripes. Eggettes.com is right next door -- we didn't get to try their flavored waffle-like specialties, because we headed straight for the toy machines in the back where, for a dollar, you could get a Disney Princess keychain in an egg, or Winnie the Pooh in a puppy suit, or Minnie Mouse on a rocking horse. Walked back home playing I-Spy, and then off we went to her open-house / orientation at preschool, where she saw most of her buddies.

And then the universe imploded that evening when the Two White Guys At The APAture Retreat, Turkey and 40, finally met, courtesy of me. (We were at the Gold Cane in the Haight, where the bartender carded me -- the second time in a week. "You ought to capitalize on that," he said. "You could pass for 17." I didn't know how to respond. There's this mean woman out there who teases me for being old.)

Give Fat Chance A Chance.

No doubt most of you Filipinos out there would have received the e-mail message (I've already received it four times) asking people to vote for the Coconet Project (I love the way it sounds like the Conet Project too), part of BBC World and Newsweek's World Challenge, "a competition aimed at finding individuals or groups from around the world who have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level." Justino Arboleda's project, which uses coconut husks to prevent soil erosion, among other things, sounds excellent; the landslides which kill dozens, if not hundreds of people, every year, would at least be prevented. (Though I would argue that the Philippine government should really be prosecuting the loggers, no?)

The e-mail message says:

"The World Challenge" already offers tremendous exposure and publicity to our flourishing Philippine coconut geotextile industry and to our Philippine coconut fiber exporters. But it would be great liberation for our country, which has been getting very bad publicity nowadays, to win this prestigious competition.

Fair enough. But I broke ranks and voted instead for Fat Chance, a project that enables the systematic collection of waste vegetable oil and converting it into biodiesel.

I didn't vote for it because it was based in Malta -- I know close to nothing about the country -- but I'm not voting for the Filipino project just because I'm Filipino either. To me it seems more and more necessary to recognize what gas-guzzling SUV owners in the U.S. obviously ignore, despite the fact that prices are creeping up to $3 a gallon: that no amount of staying the course can make the oil crisis go away. People's lives have already been sacrificed for oil. This is an issue that directly impacts everyone; indeed, in the Philippines, the crisis is getting worse and worse, with Macapagal-Arroyo talking of rationing.

The blurb on the BBC World website actually seems oddly written -- for me, it's not necessarily the clogging of drains and ocean pollution that's most crucial, but the seeking of alternatives to fossil fuel. (You can read more on biodiesel in San Francisco here; that just happens to be my neighbor Ben Jordan in the photos.) And I like the fact that Shell is sponsoring the World Challenge (perhaps accounting for the tiptoeing around "reducing Malta's dependence on imported fuels"); their logo is even above BBC's and Newsweek's.

Supporting a biodiesel project like this with $20,000 (the internet-based voting system is biased in favor of middle-class voters anyway) would at the very least mean greater exposure for biodiesel in general -- something that, in the long run, has a more direct impact on the citizens of the world in any case.

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack to an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #7.

Lee Morgan was all of 25 when he released this absolutely infectious Blue Note track in 1963, on the album of the same name. "The Sidewinder" is one of those tunes that worms its way into your head; doesn't matter whether it's somewhat overplayed or can be found on all those roots of boogaloo / roots of acid-jazz type compilations (because you can certainly hear it), because it doesn't dull its groovy vitality one bit. While I hate to say that it's perfect as background music for parties or cooking or, perhaps, a Wes Anderson film (but it's true), there's also some damn fine trumpet playing from Morgan, as well as Joe Henderson on sax.

Hear it (m4a, 14.1 mb)

Ben Santos Gets Cranky.

Most Bay Area Filipinos would know exactly what Bienvenido Santos is crankily writing about here; I'd have to stress, however, that the newspaper in question has revamped itself and has, in the last few years, produced some of the most arresting, in-depth pieces of journalism on the Filipino American community. (Except for some of the stray issues from the late '60s, and whatever else missing from the Berkeley archives, I think I've read almost every issue cover-to-cover, and still do.) The passages below, are from Santos' wonderfully-titled 1987 novel What The Hell For You Left Your Heart In San Francisco, which would perfectly with Ver's entry on great titles. (I still need to think of a snappy nickname for you, Ver).

What sort of material would they want the magazine to contain? Photos of beauty queens from the islands now in residence in this country, well groomed and heavily rouged and definitely past their prime if they had had any prime at all? Good looking tots of obvious Philippine descent in their Sunday best having a birthday party? A seemingly endless listing of names in bold type throwing parties of all sorts, anniversaries and bienvenidas not to mention despedidas? So and so has just arrived from the Philippines or leaving for the islands on a visit. This dull-faced youngster has just passed an exam where a thousand others have made it?

And more:

A cursory glance at a typical issue of two of the most widely circulated Philippine publications in this country showed practically everything my magazine should not contain.

Start with pictures: photos across an eight-column page of convention delegates..., Philippine-American community organization officers, their right hands raised in the act of being sworn into office, usually by a diminutive consul or ambassador of the Philippine embassy or consulate or someone pinch-hitting for them; men and women receiving plaques, trophies, ribbons, cups... usually surrounded by smiling relatives and well wishers.... Weddings where even the bridegroom smiles, lifting the bride's veil for a not so chaste kiss, or the bride shovelling a piece of cake into the groom's wide open mouth. A christening party where everybody's name is printed, occupation, regional ancestry, from left to right.

Yes, they're somewhat mean potshots, but it's a sentiment that was shared by many of my Daly City interviewees as well. It's also, unfortunately, accurate content analysis. So hey, I'll quote myself here: "Despite its ambitions to a kind of transnationalism, the [name of newspaper omitted for now] also functions not unlike a small community newspaper, albeit one distributed nationwide. Nowhere else has the social life of the middle-class first-generation Filipino immigrant been so prominently on display."

Okay, where was I? I bring all this up because Santos was a keen and generous observer of Filipino and Filipino American life, and something shifts in tone, it seems, after martial law. (I'm skimming through his 1992 memoir, Memory's Fictions -- which has now moved to the top of my must-read pile -- and his San Francisco novel (which he started writing in 1973!) was the product of what he called "humiliating experiences.")

But I bring it up also because the Poeta and I just saw "The Santos Trilogy," which is still playing for another two nights at Bindlestiff (check 'em out!). We've fallen into a fun rut, the Poeta and I: drinks (beer for me, single malt scotch for her), a quick bite to eat, a movie / play, drinks again, then a long-distance phone call somewhere in there. Oh, and she has a secret, and it's not exactly a laughin matter. =)

Going On With His Life.

From the Waco Tribune:

"But whether it be here or in Washington or anywhere else, there's somebody who has got something to say to the president, that's part of the job,'' Bush said on the ranch. "And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say.''

"But,'' he added, "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.''

And so he does:

In addition to the two-hour bike ride, Bush's Saturday schedule included an evening Little League Baseball playoff game, a lunch meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a nap, some fishing and some reading.

Asked Jon Stewart: "How did reading sneak in there?"

(And if you haven't yet read Cindy Sheehan's moving essay, go check it out.)

Soundtrack.

One night last week a mysterious woman gave me a DVD. "This is really creepy," she said as she slipped the disc into my hands. Almost with trepidation, I watched it the next evening, steeling myself for the weirdness to come.

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a mysterious woman (it was J-Lu, who's actually rather mysterious herself), but the film, Ken Nikai's 2001 film Soundtrack, is itself a real oddity, a visually gorgeous and disturbing nightmare of a movie.

The movie begins with the words "The darkest hour is before the dawn" superimposed on a painting of a wintry landscape; the carnival figures in the painting come to life and walk towards the camera: the tale has begun. Soundtrack is supposed to work as a fable, a dreamy evocation of something primal -- in this case, European (Punch and Judy, the Brothers Grimm). It's the story of two siblings, Sion (played by Sugizo, apparently a musician in one of those bizarre androgynous J-rock bands) and Misa (played by the beautiful Kou Shibasaki, who -- especially after her performance in Kinji Fukusaku's Battle Royale -- clearly plays unhinged just a little too well). He, decked in deliberately tattered couture, plays the violin; she illustrates books about the moon and ice cream.

What differentiates the movie from, say, The Princess Bride is the surprising amount of mutilation and dismemberment. There is an outlandish and visually interesting scene, for instance, when a female warrior of sorts, brandishing a sword, weaves through blobs of blood suspended in mid-air after she has calmly decapitated a couple of victims. There are kids in it -- and they are drenched in blood before too long -- and so the movie's definitely not for kids.

In some respects, the film can be argued to be no more than a glorified music video for Sugizo (though J-Lu reminds me that it's his movie, after all). Since Shibasaki's character is mute, she does little more, at least initially, than smile, draw and scream; Sugizo himself is practically silent as well. There is very little actually spelled out in terms of plot -- not that there's much of one in any case -- and because a good amount of the film is focused on watching Sugizo play his music (one pivotal scene is practically a perverse re-enactment of Nero fiddling while Rome burns), the music video comparisons can't be helped. The director's visual aesthetic is part Dave McKean, part Evanescence video -- all gauzy CGI goodness, with an unrelieved palette of sickly greens and purples and insouciantly rumpled hair and clothes.

But it's actually a more interesting film, if only the execution was a little less… indulgent, I suppose. There are, for instance, all these nakedly Freudian symbols on display -- the giant nest in which the two siblings sleep, the constant reappearance of ice-cream cones, the cleft in the tree from which handwritten notes spew forth, the red pregnant Moon-planet in the sky.

And while the almost-interminable looped shots of Sugizo playing the same violin riff over and over could be interpreted as the work of a lazy filmmaker, it's also an excellent cinematic analogue to his scarred memories; the recurring motifs and scenes suggest, as befitting the nature of trauma, an uncontrollable, compulsive repetition. (The editing throughout the movie -- flashing forward, then backward, with few cues for the audience -- signals this same lack of control over the frightening images.) Like the music soundtrack, Sion (and, by extension, the film itself) is stuck in a groove from which he cannot escape -- at least, until another form of doubling, right out of Vertigo, occurs halfway through the film.

In the end, however, the lavish production design doesn't quite save the movie from being something of a self-indulgent if visually unique and interesting mess; not knowing anything about the movie certainly heightened the mystery for me.

More Musical Rambling.

Despite my "shin splints" -- the product of about two weeks' worth of running on already painful shins before I finally bought ice packs -- I went out about a couple of weeks ago to the Bitter End to see Special K. (Later 40, aka TOWGAA, aka That Other White Guy At APAture, joined us after biking up from Cupertino.)*

Anyhow, weird bits of musical half-truths and unsupported assertions became the topic of music-geek conversation.

1. The Red Hot Chili Peppers: did they suck or no? (I think they sucked.)**
2. This somehow devolved into a rather pointless RHCP vs Pavement debate, which must have happened while I was in the bathroom. (I think it may have to do with the notion of musical competence.)
3. Pat Benatar's "We Belong" is better than anything Stephen Malkmus ever wrote.***
4. We also came up with a list of "People We Would Probably Never Go Out With," but I'll spare you a specific enumeration. Suffice it to say that Republicans**** were on top, followed by some rather intolerant-sounding categories having to do with food and drink, and finally -- I'm getting to the musical point here -- people with bad musical taste.*****

Up next, if I ever get to it: even more rambling on Filipino Americans and hiphop, or maybe something on music and identity.

*Okay, he didn't, but it sounds cool, and he may have thought about doing it at some point.

**With the exception of "Scar Tissue" and the lines "Sentimental gentlemen / Are not afraid to show you when" from "Show Me Your Soul," but otherwise, the Chili Peppers' crimes -- that cover of "Higher Ground," Kiedis' manboobs quivering in the "Under the Bridge" video, the whole "Give It Away" video aesthetic ripped off from the Beastie Boys' "Whatcha Want" (which may have come from somewhere else too though) -- are unforgivable.

***Completely untrue, even if those Mark E. Smith mannerisms got worse and worse after Wowee Zowee, and so I regretted it instantly, leading me to do penance by putting on "Summer Babe" in the car really loud. It's Pat's best song though.

****There's nothing intrinsically wrong with them if you're say, sharing a beer or something, but the topic of politics will inevitably come up.

(40 really wanted to make a special case for "hippies" -- particularly those with blond dreadlocks -- on the top of his list. I don't particularly mind them (there's actually a cute woman wearing just those, sitting at the table next to me as I type this), and besides, Adam Duritz's dreads (though he wasn't blond or a hippie) clearly got him a lot of Courtney-Winona action when Counting Crows was huge.

*****We thought long and hard about this. People have certain musical thresholds, I guess: would I be able to stand to hear Celine Dion in the car? Maybe -- but just one song. Would I allow myself to be dragged to a Celine Dion concert? Forget it, I'll be drinking in the bar. Would I be able to simply move to another room if Celine Dion were playing at home? Bye, it was great to meet you.

(This actually resonates with more academic concerns I had, but I'll probably save it for another longer entry. Part of an ethnographic project I've been working on, that's been simmering for a while now, has to do with the Filipino voice, mobility and capital, and scattered thoughts about the production and consumption of music in the Philippines.)

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #6.

Time to rescue this series from oblivion (this track has actually been sitting on my server for a couple of weeks!)-- though I'm actually itching to start a Bad Obscure '80s Singles series, and I have a Soundtrack for an Imaginary Quentin Tarantino Film as well. I think I'll be staggering them from now on...

You can't have too much Francoise Hardy, and this cover of a 1970 song, "Pardon," comes from the Hang Ups, about whom I know little. (It's taken from the excellent Emperor Norton compilation from 1999, Pop Romantique: French Pop Classics.) "Pardon" is a quick sweet rush of a pop song -- dig the guitars and drums split-channel thing going on -- and I love the lines "Je suis chez lui /
sans connaitre chez lui."

Somehow I envision Anderson finally letting loose and having his characters break into a spontaneous, Bande à part-style Madison -- you know, kind of like the "Kool Thing" scene in Hal Hartley's Simple Men.

Hear it (4.22 mb, .mp3).

Izzy Turns 4.

Izzy, San Francisco, August 2005

Sap, Part 3.

A reader writes (I was doubling up with laughter while reading his message):

Reading your blog -- my first slow dance was to Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne" with sweet [name withheld to protect the poor woman's privacy], in some Jewish youth-group synagogue lock-in. She was adopted and shiksa-hot! (I disgusted her but was in the right place at the right time. And then her family moved out of town.)

Man, my church youth group never had any slow dances! I remember huddling together in prayer circles and my knees probably grazing someone else's, but that was it.

I actually can't remember my first slow-dance at all -- more like first dance, period (see below); my second slow-dance was with L--- P--------- -- my old high-school classmates would probably know exactly what the initials stand for -- to Lionel Richie's "Truly." (Eek.) It's even sadder because she was so coupled up at the time with our (now) most prominent alumnus. Now if only I could remember who my very first slow-dance was -- actually, at this point, I don't care who, but what the damn song was...

The funny part is that all my high school dances were slow dances; I think my teachers were still coming from some odd '50s-type morality regarding "rock and roll music," so all the music was so-called "sweet music," i.e., the sap I've been writing about for the last four days. It wasn't until my senior year, I think, that boys finally stopped holding girls' waists and girls stopped holding boys' shoulders and starting dancing apart (or worse, in a circle, maybe even with handbags in the center). The joke was that teachers would go around with a ruler to test and see how far apart we were, but thankfully they didn't mention how far down one's hands could go. I think the rule was you had to be able to fit a fist -- nice image there -- between our bellies or something...

(This dates me, but our prom theme song was Fiction Factory's "Feels Like Heaven" -- that's because we were ultra-cool new wave types.)

Meanwhile, J-Lu ups the ante by sending me Paul McCrane's great "Is It OK If I Call You Mine?" It's actually a really quite sweet sappy song which I probably haven't heard in maybe two decades; I may have even slow-danced to it as well! (It isn't as good as Irene Cara's "Out Here On My Own," though, and J-Lu and I agree.)

In any case, I'm beginning to rethink my choice of "Same Old Lang Syne" for Sappiest Song. The Poeta called it "articulate," which is true; there is something appealing, after all, about sharing a six-pack with a former girlfriend, though I certainly wouldn't "drink a toast to innocence." (I almost wrote that I'd probably drive up to Twin Peaks, but that's really for the kids.) And so here are my new candidates (taken from suggestions from you folks), along with their criteria:

Air Supply's "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All":

- As I wrote before, "Bohemian Rhapsody"-like bombast, complete with Hair Metal Band Guitar Solo and dramatic structure (quiet first stanzas complete with tinkling piano, out-of-control falsettos sung in unison by the middle, post-orgasmic lull at the end).
- The choir singing "Making love!" in the background.
- "The beating of my heart is a drum and it's rough and it's looking for a rhythm like you."
- The choir singing "Making love!" in the background. Oh, wait, I already wrote that.

Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch":

- The most embarrassingly honest lyrics ever: "I wanna hold you till I die / Till we both break down and cry / I wanna hold you / Till the fear in me subsides."
- The most embarrassingly clunky lyrics ever: "A hesitant prizefighter / Still trapped within my youth."
- The worst opening lines ever: "You asked me if I loved you / And I choked on my reply."
- One pretty much has to sing this with one's eyes closed like Joe Cocker (who's responsible, come to think of it, with the very sappy "You Are So Beautiful." Remember that little oh-so-sincere voice quaver at the end?)

Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart":

- Features an absolutely psychedelic video with windblown big hair, billowing curtains and those fucking creepy "bright eyes."
- An almost prog-rock structure, with interludes and choruses and codas galore.
- "Once upon a time I was falling in love / Now I'm only falling apart." "Once upon a time there was light in my life /Now there's only love in the dark." Says. It. All.
- Lends itself best to karaoke screaming.
- Disco version released about a decade later.

Mp3s may be available by request, in case you need to make up your mind.

Just After She Bit Into My Salami and Cheese Sandwich At Fort Funston Yesterday.

Shelby, San Francisco, August 2005.

Sap, Part 2.

Update of sorts: J-Lu writes me to say that not only did I make her day (anytime, J-Lu!), but that the woman in Wang Lee Hom's song which I wrote about in my previous entry may not be asleep, but may in fact be dead. Which makes it just deliciously perfect; it's a moment almost as good as when I first heard that Barry Manilow's "Mandy" was actually about his dog (the truth about "Mandy" is revealed here, though).

(You can read the lyrics to Wang Lee Hom's "Last Night" here; I can't bear to listen to the song ever again. I'm sure some people out there would find it sweet -- but wouldn't it be great if the woman really was dead?)

Which brings me to Wily Filipino territory. I think Filipinos have some sort of special affinity with sappy; every karaoke party I've attended always featured some liquored-up brave soul -- actually, they were probably completely sober, which makes it worse -- getting up to sing that Horrible Love Theme From Phantom. (I usually go out of the room at this point to keep myself from beating heads with the karaoke mic.) I suspect, in any case, that Filipinos may simply have a higher tolerance for this stuff, but I'm not about to spin some grand cultural theory that links Castilian floridity with -- as Teodoro Agoncillo I think once put it -- "hot Malay blood."

Perhaps most indicative of this phenomenon was one of the more successful Manila radio stations back in the day (they apparently started broadcasting in 1973, right after Martial Law, and I can't think of anything better to lull the populace) -- okay, you non-immigrant Filipinos can tune out here and meet me further down the entry, because none of this will probably make any sense -- which played nothing but goo. The radio station was, and is, called the Mellow Touch (that already says it all), and the radio jingle went something like this (they also played some extended version every now and then):

You are the minstrel
I'm your guitar
I play what you sing
You are the star

followed by some guy purring, "The mellow sound. Of W double L."

You get the picture. This was where sappy songs lived and breathed and never died, where the song that would come closest to remotely mentioning booty would be the Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight." (We're not even talking about good sappy -- like John Travolta's "What Would They Say," aka the love theme from The Boy in the Plastic Bubble -- but really bad sappy, like "Can You Read My Mind," aka the love theme from Superman). Sure, you'd have old chestnuts like Bread's "Everything I Own" (a great, great song), but this would be jostling with songs from folks like David Pomeranz, Angela Bofill, Rex Smith, Michael Johnson, John Farnham, Michael Murphy, James Ingram, and Lani Hill in some special section of purgatory. Where they could probably play a Christopher Cross hour and listeners wouldn't bat an eyelash. Breathe's "Hands to Heaven?" Check. Barry Manilow's "Somewhere down the Road?" Check. Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch?" Here. Peabo Bryson's "If Ever You're In My Arms Again?" Definitely. Klymaxx's "I'll Still Say Yes?" Absolutely. Atlantic Starr's "Always?" Gawd. On and on -- hey, that's a sappy Stephen Bishop song!

(The "Bohemian Rhapsody" of Sappy Songs should be given a special mention here -- Air Supply's "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All," which I'm amused to discover I've actually written about before.)

I mean, here's the chorus of Rex Smith's "Let’s Make A Memory" (okay, this might just be about booty too):

Let's make a memory
Bright as the stars that shines above
Let's fill our cup with the wine of love
Just you and me
And memories of love

Awful, eh? People actually listened to this.

Or David Pomeranz's "King and Queen of Hearts," aka the love/prom theme from Zapped!:

Did I dream that we danced forever
In a wish that we made together
On a night that I prayed would never end?
No it's not my imagination
Or a part of the orchestration
Love was here at the coronation
I'm the King and
You're the Queen of Hearts

(In contrast, the greatest love/prom theme from a film ever must be Katie Irving's "I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me" from Carrie -- brutally perfect for what happens in the last half hour.)

But after much thought -- and you young folks who were born around, say, 1985, should consider yourselves privileged not to have experienced the scarring properties of this next song -- I've decided that the winner of Sappiest Song Ever is Dan Fogelberg's 1981 classic "Same Old Lang Syne." (Remember how Opus's hot hippie fiancee had a tattoo of Dan Fogelberg? Does anyone still remember Bloom County?)

I mean, you cannot beat a song that begins:

Met my old lover in a grocery store
The snow was falling Christmas Eve
Stole behind her in the frozen foods
and I touched her on the sleeve

And then the chorus is pure, unadulterated, mainlined cheese:

We drank a toast to innocence, we drank a toast to now
Tried to reach beyond the emptiness but neither one knew how

All right, I dare you folks to come up with something worse. Oh wait, there's Wang Lee Hom's "Last Night..."

Sap.

So I thought I knew sappy until J-Lu sent me the sappiest song ever this morning: Wang Lee Hom's "Last Night," which at least features a good line: "But I could not cross the ocean of your grace." But the rest of the song -- ouch. Men don't think things like that; we don't stand over sleeping women getting all frustrated and sappy!

But this evening the Poeta and I queued the sappiest of the sappy on the iPod --

- Bryan Adams' "Heaven" (I have fond memories of Bulletproof Vest playing this on the piano at Big J's beach house in North Carolina),
- Spandau Ballet's "I'll Fly For You" (not sappy, but just egregiously tacky with its punning use of prepositions: "Oh don’t you know that when I’m under you I’m overjoyed"),
- Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You,"
- Madonna's "Crazy for You" (maybe the greatest take-me-now song ever),
- The Style Council's "You're The Best Thing,"

and as a concession to some sort of rock cred,
- Iggy Pop's "Candy" (even the folks in the nearby car at the traffic light gave us a thumbs-up)

-- and sang them at the top of our lungs on the drive back to Oaktown. (The Poeta, a self-confessed karaoke Nazi, did a great job on second harmony. Someone give her a mic and a private room!)

I guess this is what fueling up at Jupiter's twice in a week does to people. Thank goodness we didn't get to George Michael's "One More Try," which has the most shameless chorus ever.