This poor girl is in for a big surprise ... or, looking at her body language, maybe she got the surprise last night.

Many years ago, I was the member of a club that met on Tuesday evenings. Mutual friends introduced me to an attractive, tall blonde woman, whom I shall call T. I was immediately smitten.

It turned out that T was the coffee and snack person for the weekly gathering, but didn't have a car. Naturally, I offered to pick her up and drive her and the goodies to and from the meeting.

Over the next few weeks, we got better acquainted and my hopes for a more intimate relationship were bouyed by our conversations about music, the seventies, her claims that she was a total pervert ... you know, the usual.

The (song)Device

SunPopBlue salutes the visionary behind the (song)Device, embodying, as it does, our bizarro world Zeitgeist: the hyper-capitalist fundamental, planned-obsolescence, the Microsoft approach to digital rights management, and the eBay path to easy money via selling cheapo gizmos from China. "Bid with utter confidence" rather sums it up, doesn't it?

In the Artist's own words: 

Disposable Pop Songs

"After carefully studying the works of Alex Chilton, Chris Bell, Stephin Merrit and others (in case the business of writing pop songs is outsourced). The Artist has carefully and finely handcrafted this song.

The wooden frame encloses a chip, on turning a knob it dispenses an original pop song. Enclosed along with the song are (in no particular order): bills (paid and unpaid), flowers from sidewalks, post-its, sketches, blue prints for big plans, etc. These may or may not have anything to do with the song being played.

After about four plays the song degenerates into noise, thus rendering the (song)Device useless.  

You can then use the (song)Device, as either:

1. (song)Device for churning out Stockhausen like symphonies or
2. Dispose the (song)device, thus symbolically rejecting materialism and therefore turning into some kind of Neo-Buddhist.

The (song)Device,thus functions as some kind of swiss army knife of cool, the one stone that kills many birds...etc. wholesome and educational entertainment for the whole family-the perfect gift for Christmas.

Bid with utter confidence.

La Danse, by Henri Matisse

My old friend, Jon Carroll, of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote the following column a while back. I was just going to quote it, but it is such a good read (and so hard to find) I think I'll just steal the whole thing.

Chronicle Books published a collection of Jon's columns a few years back, Near-Life Experiences. I will tell you this: his column "How To Drive In Indonesia" is worth the price of the book alone. I have read it so many times over the years, laughing out loud starting about the third paragraph and on through the rest of the piece.

In the eighties, I used to see Jon at the M&M Tavern, at the bar, stack of magazines and papers, a drink, a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray arrayed around him, deep in concentration, reading, working. He hates me to say things like this, but he was a true hero of mine in my youth, along with David Bowie, Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, columnist Herb Caen, and, of course, Kojak.

Herewith Jon's Matisse column: 

If you're going to read only one thousand-page book about a French artist this year, make it "The Unknown Matisse," by Hilary Spurling, in two volumes, winner of many awards, filled with big fun, poverty, struggle, scandal and lots of paintings. Cast of hundreds, many of them famous. Can't miss.

I do want to direct your attention to the color plates in the first volume, particularly plate No. 6. The caption reads: "The Dinner Table,' 1896-97. (100 x 131 cm.) The first in a long line of Matisse's works to outrage the public at the annual Paris salons; the other three remained too disturbing to show to anyone except friends in private."

Oh my; it's those naughty French artists again, free and zany in Montmartre, painting things to shock the bourgeoise. And what could it be? It is a woman arranging flowers at a dinner table. The woman is fully clothed. The food on the table is mostly fruit, including pears and lemons. The painting is, if not precisely representational, entirely uncryptic -- a plate looks like a plate, a chair looks like a chair, a wine decanter looks like a wine decanter. There are no disemboweled rabbits, watches floating in space, great smeary bits of color, glued-on bits of hair and fingernails -- nothing like that.

LP Cover Lover: The world's greatest album covers

Being a blogging blogger means more than just putting up old album convers with naked women on them, but right now it seems like enough.	I spent the entire weekend finishing the final piece, The Forever Spring, for my upcoming cd of electronic orchestral works, Sun Transform System. I am too tired transcribe the poetry these masterpieces elicit. Maybe tomorrow.