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Last weekend, Yancey and I were talking about the oh-so-BK phenomenon of the summer anthem. It’s not like certain songs don’t drop big all over the place, but it sure is something to watch a Hot 97 hit spread Brooklyn-style: thumping out of cars, earphones, boomboxes propped precariously on garbage cans, stoops, shoulders, even; everyone stopping in their tracks to nod heads, shuffle a few steps, shimmy hips and shoulders, mouth lyrics at each other laughing, whisper lyrics alone. There’s nothing like that song we all know will get us out on the dance floor and through washing dishes, will inspire us to schlump a little faster (wiggle even) in the mad, sultry heat to the deli. Sssssummer summer indeed.

This year it’s “We Belong Together.”

Just as we were walking down the street saying, “Can a ballad really be the summer song?” a moving violation (glossy black BMW, massive tires) rolled out those first few measures of tinkling piano, and we cracked up. Mariah dangled her apologies over that simple bass, three knock-kneed six-year-olds in too-big shorts danced by us singing,“Turn the dial/Try to catch a break/Then I hear Babyface,” and we knew we had a winner. ‘Tis Little Miss Comeback — Emancipated Mimi, of all people.

Ruth, it’s the truth.

A few other Rosmanias (all substantially older) during this fucked-up, funky-ass season:

Sweet Thing—Mary J. Blige
Ain’t No Way—Aretha Franklin
Here I Am—Dolly Parton
These Days—Nico
I Want A Little Sugar in My Bowl—Nina Simone
A Mistake—Fiona Apple
Coffee and Cigarettes—Otis Redding
Heard It Through the Grapevine–The Slits
All in Love Is Fair—Stevie Wonder
Que Sera Sera—Sly and the Family Stone
Got to Give It Up—Marvin Gaye (for that patented Felix Hernandez experience)
Under Control—The Strokes
Human Nature—Michael Jackson
Tezeta—Mahmoud Ahmed

P.S. Let the record show I still need a new gig. As if this list doesn’t make that patently clear.
P.P.S. I’m afraid to write about movies right now lest my antipathy for Miranda July and marching penguins leak out. Done done and done, I spose.

I would never describe myself as a fan of the clunky clunker Next Stop Wonderland, but I do really love the quiet, wistful moments in which Hope Davis screws her eyes shut and selects a quote at random from a book she pulls. Sometimes I do it too, and not only to assert my theory that anything can serve as a divining rod if we assign it the power.

Today, so aptly, my finger landed on this:

The specious, the unjust, the cruel, and what is called the unnatural, though not only permitted but in a certain sense, (like shade to light,) inevitable in the divine scheme, are by the whole constitution of that scheme, partial, inconsistent, temporary, and though having ever so great an ostensible majority, are definitely destin’d to failure, after causing great suffering.
–Walt Whitman

I interrupt my thummery thilence to throw out two more cents about Sandra Day O’Connor retiring whilst George II still perches on his too-big throne. Ah, but if you think it might not impact Roe v Wade, you’re as wrong as me in a thong. Which is to say: really, really wrong and really, really unnecessary. Get up stand up, already. If the current administration hasn’t already hit you where it hurts (and who amongst thee can say that, really?), it certainly threatens to now. We’ve been taking a lot for granted.