Friday, November 27, 2009

Black Friday morning report

I barely managed to find a parking space this morning to get my coffee and Internet fix at Hastings.

This is, of course, Black Friday and this normally moribund shopping center has suddenly become popular. I can only imagine what kind of clusterfuck is going on in the parking lot over at the Mall at Turtle Creek.

I’m in an odd Janis Ian mood, listening to her Society’s Child: The Verve Recordings album on my iPod. I had all of those tracks 41 years ago on vinyl in the form of the very obscure The Secret Life of J. janisEddy Fink album. (Her birth name was Janis Eddy Fink.) I probably would never have found that musical gem if Verve hadn’t sent a review copy of it to The Indianapolis News back in ‘68.

For those too young to remember, Janis Ian became an overnight star at 13 when she wrote and recorded Society’s Child (Baby, I’ve Been Thinking) about interracial dating. She also wrote and recorded the exquisitely beautiful and painfully introspective At Seventeen, released in 1975.

I’m surprised at how well her stuff holds up after all these years. Or maybe it’s just me being nostalgic.

I just gulped down the last of my coffee and am now out of excuses for plunging into the mob of Christmas shoppers. I shipped another four books this morning and exhausted my supply of padded envelopes. That means a trip to Office Depot or, if I want to save a couple of bucks, Sam’s Club. Either way, it’s going to be a hassle, but I gotta have ‘em because my Amazon.com book sales are picking up.


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